Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Secret Life of a CIA SPY | Untold Stories of Bribes, Informants, & Artificial Intelligence

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

The Secret Life of a CIA SPY | Untold Stories of Bribes, Informants, & Artificial Intelligence

My job was to recruit spies, find foreign officials that are willing to provide secrets, collect foreign intelligence, and run covert action at the direction of the president. If you don't do this right, you are going to swing from the bottom of a crane, and I'm not guessing. I used to capture and torture people. And now, for whatever reason, I'm not doing that anymore. I have never talked as publicly about these things as we have. I love this because I had a guy in the comments that if Cox was interviewing Jesus Christ, he started off with, where were you born?

the comments are great yeah well it's fair right i like i said in the exchange i love a good origin story i think find out where someone's from and it tells a lot about where they are and where they're going yeah why they're they why they're there yeah yeah always because i told because obviously i interview mostly criminals like i like to hear like you know what i'm saying like sometimes it's like hey i was you know i was raised in the you know raised next to the projects you know my parents were in and out of jail i was raised by my grandma you know whatever that story is and you're like oh god this guy had no he didn't have a chance you know And then you've got the other guys I was raised upper middle class.

My dad was a stockbroker. My mom was a doctor. And you're like, Jesus, how did you end up robbing banks? So that's, you know, to me, that's interesting. Yeah. Like sometimes it's like, okay, this is almost preordained. Like, you're, there's no, I don't know how you're getting out of this situation. And other people, it's like, the fuck are you doing.

How did this happen? Yeah. Oh, I love it. So you say, you usually interview criminals and I would say, well, you are again. Yeah. Depending on perspective. Right. I always say, you know, hey, in America, I'm a patriot.

But there's a lot of countries that would consider a lot of what I did. criminal activity. Oh, yeah. You know, we're one of the people that are trained to go overseas and break foreign laws. Yeah.

That's just the business. Yeah, I was going to say when I interviewed, we talked about him earlier, Boussinante, is that he's always like, well, you know, the difference is that what's interesting,

he always says, what's interesting about my story is that he's like, I had somebody give me a passport, give me an identity, give me all these things, he's like where you had to figure out, how can I steal someone's identity,

obtain all their documents, convince the, you know, the state department to give me it or first go get a DM go get an ID from the DMV in their name then convince the state department to give me a drop a passport in their name like I had to go through all those and he's like he's like to me I've got like a team of guys that sets this whole thing up you did it the hard way right I've got a secretary of the book's appointments for me right and I go in and you know the hardest thing is gosh how long is it's going to take and you're dealing with the bureaucracy but you don't have that am I going to get caught at least not when you're getting the

things issue maybe when you're using it and how you're you know but I was going to say it to because I've had that conversation too where it was like to me if I get caught I get caught in the bank I get handcuffed I go to jail if if you're on foreign soil and you get caught in the wrong place like you may not be you may not you'd be lucky to go to jail and be prosecuted you may not be coming back you know well I was going to say of course it's how you get your documents is a little bit of the spicy part for us once we get the documents that's just a ticket to the movie and then you take it overseas and you do your thing and and you're absolutely right I mean it's you get caught over there there's big boy yeah big boy and and the least of what you'd be concerned about is some

handcuffs and miranda rights i mean there's other ramifications for for these kind of things right so well let's let's start with like yeah like we said uh or you know where where were you born yeah so i was born on a farm in ohio right uh-huh my dad was a vocational agriculture teacher okay f f f a and uh my mom was a secretary all right so came from yeah yeah i was going to say Were you, were you, so you were what, trying to get out of that? Or were you thinking when you grew up, you were going to be a farmer? No, listen, it sounds crazy when I say it out loud, but people have heard me say it before, so I'll say it again.

You know, I was born into this life. I was put on earth to be an intelligence officer. And every time I tried to deviate from it, I was pushed back into it. And, you know, this life chose me. I didn't choose it. Right. And whether it was because I grew up as a fan of Jedi over the dark side or whether it was because I supported G.I. Joe over COBRA or because, you know, it was Ronald Reagan, not the

Soviets. Whatever it was, I always had this sense of right and wrong and knew that I was going to go into the military and knew I was going to go into service. And even when I was in elementary school looking up books on intelligence, and back then there weren't any books on intelligence. People didn't write books like this. And certainly if they did, they weren't in an elementary school library in a farming town in Ohio. And so, but it was just, yeah, I've always been interested and have yeah never deviated from the path yeah ironically enough when I grew up my internet was the Britannica we had the my mom had bought in the whole you know whatever hundred books of the Britannica what a mess that was um just trying to find something

remind me to tell you how became Middle East specialist by the way that that'll uh that you'll appreciate that story okay so so so at so at some point you graduate you know high school like I mean did you did you know because you know I've interviewed FBI agent yeah And, you know, whatever, different law enforcement. And, like, you know, sometimes there's a clear path. Like, you'll, I had an FBI, I had a guy that was an FBI agent that had spoken with an FBI agent. He was like, listen, he was like, I would love to be FBI. He's like, here's what you do.

Yep. He's like, here, there's only like three, three paths that will help you get directly in if you have a chance. Yep. And he gave it to him. And he followed one of them. Is that? That's exactly it. Now, I don't know if you, you know, looking at me, you probably are surprised I didn't go this path.

But my first choice, I was going to. going to go replace Joe Montana and be an NFL quarterback, obviously. And so at some point I had a high school coach that reminded me, he goes, hey, not for nothing. You're a 5-9 white kid that runs a 4740. You guys are two dimes, you know, two dozen for a dime. And so when Ohio State didn't come calling for a football scholarship or, you know, shockingly enough, right, I had a great ROTC instructor, junior ROTC instructor in high school. He said, kid, what do you want to do? And I said, I said, listen, I either want to work for the agency or the bureau, right, CIA or FBI. So he grabbed me up, took me down to the guidance counselor's office, and said, got into the phone book, look for CIA, because that was my first choice.

Well, he couldn't find CIA in the phone book. So he finds the FBI office in Dayton, calls him. I got a kid here who wants to go to the FBI. What's he have to do to get into the FBI? And they said he's got to get a degree. Military service is great. And he can be a lawyer, an accountant, or whatever, yada, yada. And as soon as he said military service is a way to get there,

done sold you know my dad uh served in vietnam my grandfather's both uh one of them fought in world war two in the pacific the second one was national guard uh we fought in a lot of different conflicts and so that was always very strong for me as well and so my my career what i had chosen uh outside of the NFL which didn't choose me military college FBI or CIA right and that was your college degree uh my college degree okay so I enlisted, I always joke, I did so well in high school that I got to enlist in the Navy. And so I said, well, I'm going to go into the service. If I want to go, I want to fight. This was the early 90s. Gulf War was over. Balkans hadn't started. But I knew I didn't want

to go in the military and be a cook or something like that. So I originally was going to enlist in the Marines. And golly, the Navy recruiter showed me this video. He said, let me tell you about these guys you may not have heard of. And he said, the seal program. So I watched the video and I'm like, oh, done. That's exactly what I want to do. I looked over the part that I wasn't a very good swimmer, which as it turns out, was a thing. And that I wasn't a very good runner. I was a sprinter, but not a runner, which was also a thing. So I enlisted in the Navy, went through the program, went to Buds, was into the halfway through Hell Week, and voluntarily dropped, became a law enforcement specialist, was what they were doing with a lot of us that dropped.

And that's how I ended up in the Middle East as a Middle East specialist. Okay. People asked me, my whole career was on the Middle East, and they say, how did you, how did you become a Middle East specialist? I said, well, I was really bad at geography. So what? Well, I graduated law enforcement academy, and I called the guy that gives us jobs. And everyone was going cool places, right, Rhoda or Cigonella or Iceland, Reykjavik, cool places. I call him up and he says, hey, I've got Guantanamo Bay, or I've got Manama.

I'm like, I know where Guantanamo is. I don't know where Manama is. I hand the phone to my buddy. My buddy picks up the phone. I said, I'll take Manama. I said, I'll take Manama. He goes, hey, where's Manama? I'm like, I don't know.

I think it's somewhere in Central America. So we go down to the base library, pull up the encyclopedia. We go past Managua, which in fact is in Central America, to Manama, which is the capital of Bahrain, which, like, we just volunteered to go to the Persian Gulf. All right. I went over there, loved it, ended up staying there two years, and that's, you know, was my basis in the Middle East was because I was really bad at geography. But then I'm leaving, I had some good friends in NCIS, Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I said, kid, what do you want to do?

Well, I love being overseas. Love being overseas. I'm asked, man, I want to work for the agency. And they said, okay, what are you going to study in college? I said, hey, I'm going to study Russian. I think that's the thing. And they're like, hey, it's 1997. I don't know if you've been following the news,

but that whole Soviet Union thing's done. You know what we don't have is people who are experts in China. I said, well, I don't know anything about China. They said, neither does anybody else. So to answer your question. That's not good. So what, what are horrible, these are horrible reasons to choose career. Listen, so I go back to school and I get my undergrad in political science and East Asian studies with the focus on China.

Oh, that's perfect. Yeah, perfect. So I learned Chinese, learned all about Chinese military strategy. I was Mr. China. I joined the agency in July of 01. So, so, so out of college. You just go apply? They have a guy?

No, man, that's not the way. Yeah. I was going to say. No, not at all. So when I was in school, I interned at the Department of State. And it was really clear. You know, in the government, like a lot of jobs, there's tribes that you fit in and tribes you don't.

And I wasn't a State Department guy. God bless them. Great people, not my jam. But I parlayed my State Department internship into an internship with Department of Defense where I was teaching people how to sell weapons. That was more along my. my lines, foreign military assistance and all that. Parlayed that into an internship with the FBI. While I was at FBI, I was contacted by some people at the agency because of a program I was

working on related to my study in school. But at the same time, John McLaughlin was just appointed deputy director, CIA. And John McLaughlin, a great guy, was an career analyst, but he was an alumni of my little school, Wittenberg University in Ohio. And so I got a call from the alumni office they said hey you're in dc you like her national security guy we just had an alumni alumnus get get appointed to be deputy director cia do you want to go interview him i said absolutely do you want to interview him him for the alumni magazine oh just for the magazine just for the magazine just for the magazine yeah it'd be in an opportunistic guy said that fell in your lap oh absolutely so i go over to cia headquarters i talked to him and i had been elected the president of our student body our

student senate i would not our senior class but student senate how old are you at this point oh hell i'm 22 so i went when i went back to school i played football at school and they used to call me uh i usually don't have very good nicknames but this was a pretty good one they called me old navy because i've been in the navy before and then you know back playing football so i'm a little bit older a little bit older 20 yeah 22 23 so i'm interviewing him talking to him and what a great guy first off just what a tremendous guy and so the interview he was sort of wrapping up. It's 15 minutes. And he asked me a few questions about myself, but not too much. We talked about him and his career. And then he says, well, and I said,

man, what a great, what a great honor to be able to talk to you. He said, do you want to get a cup coffee? I said, yeah. Why? Of course. So 45 minutes later, you know, I told him, I said, really, I kind of want to end up here. And he said, yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing. Calls over his EA and say, get this kid's information. Let's see what we can do. And I had already had an application started and it was fascinating and I said hey and again this is we've talked about it before you could imagine what you'd have done the exact same thing I went ahead and pitched him I said hey if I can get you selected to be our senior class speaker would you come back and speak at commencement and he said yeah I'd be I'd be open to that so I went back to

school and started my first successful covert action operation to get him elected to be our commencement speaker so I'm going through the application process and whatever and sure enough He, senior classes, like, absolutely, how cool is this? And again, this was back when CIA was, you know, this was late, it was, it was in 2000. It was before any, you know, I mean, we'd passed the period of controversy and hadn't quite got to the period of controversy post 9-11 about a few things. We select them. He comes back, University of President, who I'd work for in college, said, hey, you know the guy. Why don't you help organize the visit?

I'm like, I don't really know the guy. I met the guy, but I, okay, fine. So I don't think much about it as he's coming in. standing there with the president and Mr. McLaughlin, God bless him, throws his arm around me, he goes, hey, how are you doing? Like, we're all beer drinking buddies. Come sit with me and, I don't know how much of this I should say, but I'll say it. You know, he's like, why don't you come sit at the head of the table with me?

So like the vice provost got knocked off the head of the table, and there I am sitting there. And everyone's like, what the hell is going on? We go up and get, you know, go up to the buffet line. He leans over and says, hey, what's going on with your application? I said, hey, it's going well, but I'm stuck in security. He goes, okay, I'll make some calls. I'll get back to you. I'm like, all right, he's just a good guy.

He's just shuck in and jiving. Yeah, yeah. That night we go out to dinner with him at the club, like the university club. And again, I don't, you know, I'm helping him navigate. He's doing a colloquium and there's some students who are going to ask some silly questions. And I sort of point out, here's who they are and here's what they're going to ask. Anybody who's listening to this will laugh about in college because I know I was conservative and whatever. Anyway, so we navigate all that.

We go to dinner. He pulls me into the coat closet. He said, hey, I made some calls. I was like, no shit. He says, yeah. He said, you're going to get a call on Monday from a head of security. He's going to talk to about where your application is. He said, okay.

Again, not thinking anything. And he was great. Awesome. Well, comes Monday, I get a call from the head of security. Not like some dude who worked in security, like the director of security, who says, what's going on? I explained where it was. He goes, okay.

A week later, I was through the security review. And I'd already done all the needful. I mean, they didn't bypass anything. It was just stuck up in adjudication because of, some issues and so I'm in and and I always joked about that that like I got basically brought in by the deputy director and people are like no that's not that's not how it's done that's not how it's done and two times two times when I first started I was at the Christmas party right so July I get in with a big Christmas party director deputy director down there one of my classmates goes through and

gets his picture taken with the deputy director and he says hey one of your classmates is Charles how's he doing and the guy immediately hits me up and says hey this guy was asked me about you what the hell and i was like oh i never really mentioned it they went down and talked to him and then my first uh posting abroad i was telling my chief i said hey uh the deputy told him this story and these and my first chief was like yeah sure sure kid yeah i'm sure that's how it happened and so i was at a place and the director and the deputy director came out and uh deputy director walks by and we're just in a crowd and i said sir and he looks at me he throws his arm around me and said, I wonder what happened to you? And my boss is saying, what in the hell is going

on here? So anyway, that's a really long story for a short piece about how'd you get in? I was lucky. I was in the right time, at the right place, doing the right things. And I just got lucky. I found a good guy. And he looked out for me. And I got in. Right. So. Yeah, I was just thinking, like, I'm sure that didn't, that didn't hurt at all with your boss or anybody else that knew that. You know, I'd been in the military and I'd served overseas and I was Phi Beta Kappa and I'd done all this. I'd done all the things to put myself in the right position, but still. Yeah. Who am I?

It's still pretty cool to be. Yeah. You know, the guy that the deputy director is like, what's going on, bro? You know, and again, it, uh, your boss is like, he didn't fucking know my name. Exactly. What the, what is happening? Yeah. And I'm 100% sure.

He's like, yeah, this kid's full of shit. Yeah, I'm sure. Great story, bro. I bet that's really how it happened. I'm like, I. I don't know. Like I told you, I'm not smart enough to make this stuff up. I'm just like Forrest Gump here.

It just kind of fell in my lap. So where did you, where did, so you ended up? So, okay, so, wait a minute, I mean, you, I mean, you, where did you end up? What am I missing here? Like you, you, at this point, you end up going where? Did you go to the, the Middle East? Yeah, so, okay, so funny story, right? So everyone who knows the U.S. government's going to laugh.

So when I was a kid, right, went to the Middle East on accident. right became a Middle East guy went to college and thoughtfully studied China right so right because China's going to be the next thing but then I joined the CIA in July of 2001 okay right so September 11th happens I'm a young single military age male with experience in the Middle East yeah so will I he next thing you know I mean there was a few steps in between I can't necessarily say where I was right out of the shoot but I went to training I got sent on a first assignment I was one of the first guys out of the field because of some situations and I was just saluted and said, hey, I'll go wherever you want me to.

It wasn't where I wanted to go, but it turned out to be a great job. And then when the war in Iraq kicked off in March of 2003, they were looking for volunteers. And I raised my hand. I said, I'm in. World War. Right. I'm at war. I mean, this is what I joined for.

So I went to the Middle East, spent a couple of years there very quickly. And then from there, they sent me in a, I learned Persian. and from there on out, I was a Middle East guy. Okay. So what are you doing there? I mean, are you, is it, you know, intercepts? Is it, you know, I always think of the CIA guys is going into these little towns and trying to dump a bunch of money onto some warlord to get him to agree to, you know what I'm saying?

Listen, listen, Matt, I can't get into details. I mean, the wheels of democracy are lubricated with all kinds of things. And let's just say I was a lubricant applicator, if you will. How you like that? That's pretty good. lubricant applicator. I was a case officer. Right. I was an operations officer. When people think of intelligence officers and CIA spies, we always joke, right? Jack Ryan was an analyst. Well, analysts don't do what Jack Ryan did. Right. That's what makes it cool. That's what makes it cool.

And you know, and what makes a guy like me cool is that that's what I did, but I don't, I don't think it's exceptional. But no, I was a, I was an operations officer. It was a case officer. My job was to recruit spies, which means, you know, find foreign officials that are willing to provide secrets and it's usually exchange for money. So I would recruit foreign spies. I would collect foreign intelligence and run covert action at the direction of the president. When we have covert action, case officers and people like us, there's other supporting elements that help. We conduct that covert action to influence COVID or not really influence foreign events to support the U.S. I was going to say, it's funny. You don't think it's, you know, you don't think

it's spectacular because like, you know, a fish doesn't know it's surrounded by water. You know what I'm saying like you're in the environment it doesn't seem that odd typically when i interview like a criminal or something and he's like you know so this and that happened and then this guy told and then they indicted me and then i then i got arrested so i was in prison you're like whoa whoa whoa you know like you tell him one guy about getting arrested so you know but to the guy that's driving a forklift that's listening to this that's never been arrested i'm like i know they didn't knock on your door and say hey could you come down down right like i'm like what happened with the arrest they're like oh bro they came in like they're like 40 guys they had they had machine guns they kicked in my front door they

just like right okay so right no another guy you don't think it's weird it doesn't think seems strange no and i'll tell you there were probably a handful of times in my career where something's happening and in the moment you're looking around like i'm it yeah this is i'm negotiating with this president of this other country or with this whatever to do something that is i'm going to i'm collecting this and i'm going to report that i know is a war in peace where someone's going to die because we've received this information, I'm like, surely there must be an adult in the room somewhere and you look around and it's just you, and you're like, so, so I mean, yeah, day in, day out, if you say the things that you do, it sort of sounds, it sounds ridiculous to say.

Yeah. But certainly there were even times in the moment that you recognize the gravity of the situation, and you're like, no, there's got to be some other adults doing this. Or, you know, you do something and I'm thinking, man, if my mom knew what I was doing right now, I don't think she'd be very happy. What kind of life choices have taken me to this position right now? I'll tell you a funny, I'll tell you one of those is one of my favorites. My wife, who I'm going through a process of being divorced with, but, you know, it's aside from the point.

So we're in a country overseas. Right. Right. And I have found a guy. Yeah. It's a guy with some stuff, right? So he's got access to a place. Right.

Wow. Yeah. I'm real specific here, real specific. And so he's got the keys in his hand. The keys that he's got in his hand is a place that we want to be in, right? And, you know, I mean, yeah. And so, long story short, we've been through a lot of different things. And so I pick up his keys and I'm holding them in my hand.

And he says, listen, and with this other name that was a completely made up name, completely made up name, no backstopping, no nothing. I just met this guy on the street and chucked and jived and we got to where we were. I said, well, listen, I've got a envelope full of money. in my pocket for these keys. I'm going to take these keys to the bathroom and I'm going to make a copy of. And this guy says, listen, bullshit made up name. Right.

If you think you're walking, I'm one of a handful of people with these keys. If you walk out of here and disappear, I'm dead. Right. He said, so you're not going anywhere without me. I said, all right, let's go. And so here I am. I'm wearing a trench coat.

And it's funny, right? Because we always joke about spies and trench coats and all this stuff. But I did because I was going after the keys at that particular meeting. I'm wearing a trench coat around that weighs about 90 pounds because I've got things in there to make a copy of the key. I've got a tripod. I've got menstruation.

I can measure a camera, all this stuff. Kling, cling, clink, clink, clink when I'm walking around. So we go into the bathroom of this. Ultimately, it was a Turkish restaurant. And I'm in a suit. And he's in, you know, his appropriate business attire. And I'm on my knees in the same bathroom. stall as this guy is with the door shut and I'm on my knees looking up at him and he's saying hurry up and I'm saying shut up and I'm trying to make some copies and do some stuff with the keys and and it was in that moment where I'm like what brought me to the place where I'm on my knees in a bathroom stall with the guy who's yelling at me hurry up and I'm yelling at him shut up and then we walk out and these Turkish guys are just snickering like you know I don't know what was going on in there but it sounded kind of funny and uh

And ultimately, I only say that because that was one of those like, what kind of life decisions have brought me to this moment right now? And then, of course, I'm thinking, wait, am I going to be able to expense the cleaning bill for my suit? Because I'm on my knees in this bathroom stall. I'm certainly going to send it to the cleaners. And then the other piece was, that was a Marine Corps ball that night. I don't know if you know much about Marine Corps ball and when you're overseas.

The Marine Corps balls are it. You put a tuxedo on the Marines once a year Marine Corps birthday. It is the event of the year. And so I get home, and of course I'm late. as I'm always am, you know, my wife doesn't know where I am, because I can't tell her. You know, what are you doing? I'm working. Well, the Marine Corps balls tonight. I've got a gown. It's a big fancy thing. So as I'm walking in the door, she's pissed as she is most of the time at me or was and is, whenever. So she's like, I'm going. I'm like, all right, well, I got to get my tuxedo on and everything.

And I'm like, are you going to wait? And she's like, no, I'm not. And so I'm like, all right, well, whatever. What were you doing? working okay fine i'm going fine so i jump in the shower throw my tuxedo on do all that stuff and uh go to the ball by the time i get there of course she's doing shots with marines and you know whatever it's fine but all my guys are huddled around me like hey how to go because you know a couple of knew what i was doing i was like oh man we got the thing and did the thing blah blah blah my wife's like what the hell is going on and i'm like i did a thing and i was working then we ended up having a great night but but uh i guess that's two or three stories right there one i can't believe i was in the

opportunity to do that kind of thing right two that's the nature of it right i may be a fish in the water but generally if someone's like what are you doing i'm a fish in the water awesome what kind of water what kind of fish a fish who are you swimming with another fish anyway what are you talking about that's the life you know i was going to say that that that seems lonely like it seems you have nobody to confide in or can you only confide it can you even confide in other people that are in the agency because well that's it's interesting right so for us if you're doing it right you know it's it's the people that you work with the my best friends are still the people i work with because they know not my wife not my family not my you know not people on the

outside because they're good friends but you don't have that commonality right you don't look at them and say well remember that time that you know we got shot at or we collected this information and this happened and that happened and this ended up in the detainee or or whatever nobody else really i mean you can explain the stories but it just doesn't it doesn't resolve and so yeah it's tough on a marriage and so yeah we used to say when you're overseas if you're doing your job right you have agents that you're running you have people that you're working on you have targets you don't have friends we've got time for friends you know you've got work yeah you've got work and you've got work your family but you don't have friends i mean if you're doing it right you

don't have friends yeah i was going to say you have a pissed off white oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah big time big time yeah i i i was horrible to my wife particularly at the beginning because i didn't think i could tell her anything right as i got a little more mature and a little more experience i realized okay i can tell her i can tell her a few more things but oh oh man okay i gave you another good one this is a funny one so she was giving me a hard time because i was out all night a lot of times. I mean, you know, the good stuff doesn't happen at lunch. Right. And the good stuff doesn't happen over breakfast. Right. Right. The good stuff happens at night. And you may come home smelling like, you know, strippers and glitter. And you're working. Of course I'd rather be home.

See, baby. I was working. Of course I'd rather be home. You think I wanted to be out there drinking all those martinis and eating that steak and getting lap dances? No, I wanted to be home. This doesn't work. It's horrible. It's horrible. Somebody's got to do it. It's horrible. I mean, I've got liver. I've got liver damage, you know? And that's, but hey, it's a silent injury. So I'm out all night. And she's like, why do you have to be out all night? And I said, because I'm doing this thing.

You know, every once in a while you have to meet somebody in a hotel, whatever. And so, oh, I was an asshole. Can I curse? Yeah. Okay. I do have a quick question. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Real quick. Like, does she realize you, you know, a lot of times you'll hear, and this is movies, bro, like, I don't know shit. But, you know, like, they all, the wife will think they work. for like the state department like they think they have a little job of this they they know they know they know okay they know they know because at the end of the day your support network is the other wives and spouses because they're the only other people that understand you can't go to a state department mark you can't go to another government agency person and say well isn't your husband out all night because they're not right that's just not what happens so the one time man this i was such

a jerk too it was horrible i uh i told her i was like fine you don't want me to be out all night fine, I'll tell you what, I'll have the other guy rent the room, and if I walk in there and it's an ambush and he kills me, that'll be on you, you know, because that was an idiot, right? And so, fast forward, of course, you can imagine how this is going to go. So fast forward, probably about... The new BMO, V.I. Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks, more points, more flights,

more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter Mastercard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash VIPorter to learn more. The next time I was out, I'm out, I'm in a meeting. It is awesome. It's killing it. Guys just, you know, keys to the kingdom, man. I'm just taking notes, taking notes, taking notes. By the time I look up, I don't know, it's dawn. Maybe it's eight. Maybe it's eight. it's nine it's whatever time because you don't stop right guys give me the goods and he's got time and you've got time you just that's what you're doing so man i'm feeling good i'm feeling great so i finally

break out you know go back and this is years ago of course and uh get to where i can get my phone turn my phone back on and i've got like 97 messages and then i get all these calls and like hey what are you doing where are you blah blah blah and by that time my wife is called everybody my real boss my pretend boss my all these different people like where's he at and finally someone was like he's fine they didn't you know yeah yeah they don't they don't say but they're fine he's doing something and so i get home and she's like you asshole what did you do i thought you were dead i thought that da da da da da and i was like and and of course i'm on cloud nine i'm like no i had a great meeting and she's like you're such an asshole and yeah it happens right you know but uh and and and

anyway yeah no it's a tough lie because you can't you can't explain that yeah you can't explain that yeah well i was i was going to say too like so let's say you put in a bunch of work right you you talk to some guy that works to works for their version of some country's version of the state department he's giving handing over information right he's saying look these nuclear weapons are filled with water they don't even work the boosters are just they're made a cardboard like you know whatever he's telling you a bunch of stuff and then or you know and you've got a bunch of what actionable information and you're thinking i'm going to give this to my boss he's going to give it to so and so and two weeks from now we're going to find out that this happened you know

how often is do those types of things happen and then suddenly nothing ever happened oh you know what I'm saying because like I can imagine to me it's like being a cop like people kids you know young men daydream of being a cop and they're in car chases and they're pulling their guns and the truth is most cops never pull their gun they never fire their gun most you know there's never a car chase there's never you know and it's kind of you know boring and you're sitting on the side of the road and you're going here and you're meeting your buddies and so you know it's disappointing so I can imagine being in the CIA where it's there's tons of information being gathered, but very seldomly do they act on that information.

It's more gathering it and giving it to somebody to try and negotiate a deal and have the inside track, but like how often does that happen where nothing happens? Or maybe something happens. Like something happens, you say whatever, and then three weeks later you're watching the news and go, holy shit. Yeah. That's a great question. It's a great question.

And I think it's a really sophisticated question because you're absolutely right. Sophisticated. Do you hear that? He's a sophisticant over here. Yeah. No, and it's like a dude question, right? Because you know in real dude world, well, even if you're a dude, you're only a dude once in a great while. You're not a dude all the time.

This isn't Jason Bourne or James Bond where you go from gunshot to gunshot to car chase to fist fight to making love to the supermodel to. No, we were actually joke. And still get back to the poker table. Oh, of course. Oh, it look amazing. And look great. Yeah, at one point, I want James Bond to show up, the shoveled and sweaty. because he had to do a whole big thing

to make sure he wasn't followed before he got to whatever he was going to do but he doesn't right he drives his nice car up in parks we were joking about the other day the most realistic espionage movie you could possibly make would be you know like the opening scene for mission impossible or james bond where it's like an action scene right and then the next two hours he's just sitting at a desk writing reports like at minute 47 he gets up and gets some coffee

and sits back down and just keep that would be the most accurate portrayal ever. No, look, if you're doing your job and you're taking the right assignments and you're in the right places, you're going to pivot U.S. policy, there's going to be times where you're going to come back and be like, man, this is it. And there's going to be times where you're going to come back and say, this is it. And absolutely nothing happens. Because, you know, here's the thing, right? Just because you have exquisite, perfect intelligence doesn't mean that that fits with the political narrative. Doesn't mean that policymakers is going to look at and go, aha, what I really wanted to do is this but now I've got that piece of information so we're going to do that maybe it is maybe

it's not now the closest to that is when you're in a war zone or working on CT information and you get that piece of information and then there's an effects on the there's an effects on the space and and someone's removed from the battlefield right I mean that's fairly dramatic yeah and you know 20 years we worked that didn't not happen you know there's a military raid based on the information you've provided, or there's a strike based on the information you've provided. But no, the vast majority of time, it just all fits into the bigger puzzle. Right. Right.

And whether you're the linchpin of that piece or whether you're just one tile on a greater mosaic or whether your tile, even though it's really important, gets discarded because maybe it doesn't fit the story that they're trying to tell. Or you got it just too late or too early. Yeah, and you just have to be satisfied. Like the whole job through the whole job. you have to know what you're doing and you're doing it for you're doing it for the country and you're doing it for you know but you're doing it for your parents and you're doing it for your

friends and we always say hey if you wanted applause yeah join the circus yeah that's not what we do i was going to say it's like to me it's like the equivalent of being a guy on the assembly line who's putting the door on the ford but you never get to see it you never get to drive it you never get to see it come off the line you know this is my piece it's the um oh god i always love this I love this saying where it's the two stone masons. Yeah. You ever heard that? There's two stone masons and an architect walks by and says, the one stone mason, what are you doing?

And he says, I'm cutting these stones into blocks. And he's the other one. He says, what are you doing? And he says, I'm on a team that's building a cathedral. Like he can see the bird. You know, I always love that. Like he's got, I'll bet you that makes his job so much easier than this guy that just thinks he's cutting up stones. 100%.

Look, so one, yes, you've got to understand, you're building cathedrals. Right. Right. You are protecting America. Now, your job in protecting America may be, like you said, put the door handle on today, or it may be designed the safety, the airbag or whatever. And there's times where you may build the whole car. Right.

And maybe it was your idea from start to finish. And it's awesome. Almost never. I mean, it's a team support no matter what you're doing. You're getting support or whatever. And oftentimes, you're just one piece of the puzzle. but I think the biggest difference there is so Ford launches the car

Ford makes a lot of money and you know you all throw a party afterwards and everybody celebrates and everybody gets recognition and all that kind of stuff that's the biggest part I think that's different of you know what we did you do it because of the 10 guys whose opinion or gals I say guys but you know whatever

the 10 people in the agency whose opinion you actually care about know what you did and when you have that drink you kind of look at each other like yep and that's it yeah you don't get a ribbon you don't get a parade you don't get a write up in the paper and then you go on do the next thing and then you go on do the next thing you don't even stop you now you just go on do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and that's just and you've got to be able to yeah you got to be able to live with that yeah I was going to say it's uh did you ever see the movie argo oh yeah I love that fucking

movie um I this is my favorite line is when he says he says when the director or so whoever they're talking to he pitches the idea of you know going in there with the film crew pretend they're film crew and he says he says is this the best idea you have and he goes no sir he said this is this is this is he said we don't have any good ideas they're all bad ideas and he said but this is the best bad idea we have oh and he and he's like that's the pitch i got nothing but bad but this is the best bad one yeah you know and uh and then of course at the end when they sneak them out like you can't say nothing. Okay.

And you're going to get a medal and he's like, oh, I'm getting a metal. Well, we're going to take it back. No, listen. What the fuck is going on? Argo is perfect for about three different points that we've just made. One, who's the hero of the story? Tony Mendez, right?

Ben Affleck. Right. Right. They wrote out the entire character of the case officer that was with him that ran that operation. Oh, okay. Because that's not what we do. So it was Tony Mendez, right? Tony Mendez was the hero.

Well, literally. in fact there was a case officer there that was handling a lot of that and tony was kind of a support guy yeah but our case officer was completely written out of the story and we're okay with that because that's what we do so that's one two that that culminating scene where they're running down the air running down the runway and they're chasing them and all that stuff dramatized right and and the reason why that's dramatized is you can't accurately convey when you're crossing a border with false documents in a country where that's a death offense you can't convey look you can't you can't you can't convey

the stress and the sweat running down your back and the I mean that that that that's it right you can't convey that in a movie right and I'm just laughing because yeah it gives me chill bumps because I you know just reliving that scenario and having been there several times it doesn't convey to an audience so you've got to have you've got to have a chase yeah but but but real dudes know if you've ever been there If you've ever crossed a really hostile border And I don't even know why I'm lowering my voice Because now it's getting good If you've ever crossed a border like that

In other documents where you had no There's no diplomatic cover There's no phone of friend You're gonna go to Big Boy You got big boy problems if you get screwed up You can't convey that Because it looks boring Because you hand him your passport

And he looks at you and you look at him And he asks you a question You answer correctly and he stamps it and you move on Well it's the movies too Like they dramatize the whole scene When they're calling They keep stopping him I mean, he's walking back to the, to the office, and the phone's ringing, you can hear it ringing.

You're like, oh, my God, that's, they did an amazing job, though. Yeah, no, a great movie, great, great story. It's rare that we get to trumpet our successes like that. And it's, yeah, it's great. Oh, shoot, I had a question, too. All right, I had, I had something, too. So, what was I going to tell you was, oh, gosh, you know. Did you like that on command?

I know, that was nice. That's nice. And, you know, because it's funny, I've used. I've had some of my charges are passport fraud because I've used a, it's not a false passport. It was issued to me by the State Department, but not my name. And I've gone through passport control. Yeah. You know, people are like, weren't you scared?

Weren't you work? I really wasn't because it was a real ID. It was a real, I mean, it was a real passport. So I wasn't concerned. And even if I get caught, I'm just going to get arrested and go back to the United States. Not that I wanted to, but nobody's going to put me in a chair and beat me until, you know what I'm saying? Like I got no concern about my safety. Right.

Right. Well, yeah, it's, I think that was the first time, I don't know, even if, I'd like to think I was fairly sophisticated when I joined the agency and, you know, had understood what the job was about. But I guess I was always in the impression that, well, you know, at the end of the day, you've got immunity. And if it's real bad, it's going to be bad, but you're going to catch a beaten, but then you're going to get to go home. And then for me, and what I was doing, you realize, no, that's not the way it works. Diplomatic communities, if you're diplomatically posted to a country and you're all that. stuff when you do all the other things and you're traveling to other places and other blah blah blah blah blah blah there's no there's no protection right i mean we're americans but at the

end of the day there's no protection yeah they might swap you out in two years when they got a couple of their guys they want back and again but that's you know that's life right i can remember some of the hardest people frankly some of the hardest times the hardest encounters i had were in the u.s coming back into the country after successfully completing an operation overseas and using different documents and getting pulled into secondary and having to explain to a uh a u.s customs person right another time uh just because it's a funny story right so i'm flying on u.s military air when i'm in the war zone and you know of course i'm a civilian i've got a beard i've got an m4 and you know clearly i'm not one of the normal guys and so i go up there and i'm like hey i need to fly from this particular

place to that particular place i jump on mill air because like okay fine what's your name and i give my name whatever my name was at the time okay cool cool what's your social and i was like because nobody ever asked your social and you should know it i mean this is where the movies oh i know everything exquisitely yeah no grow up peter pan i've been living in this name for two years i don't remember that detail because no one cares so i remember i'm like uh nine seven six four seven two five nine and the guy looks at me you know sergeant whatever looks at me and says sir you're missing a digit and i said two five five he goes okay

and he looked at me like I know you're full of shit I looked at him like you know I'm full of shit but obviously I'm a good dude let's just and yeah sure enough I went past but it's just another one of those funny things like in a movie no that would have never flown right unless it's like a comedy but no in real life

that shit happens that stuff happens all the time I mean not like that but you know yeah oh listen I've been I mean I know that stuff happens because like Do you remember when it used to be you would use your credit card and they'd run it and then maybe they'd say, hey, call, you know? So it wouldn't be like swipe, denied or, you know, or accepted. Sometimes they'd say they'd have a code and they'd have to call the actual bank that was issued on. Yeah.

So I've been at a cash register bought whatever, $1,000, $2,000 worth of shit and it's all piled up and they run my American Express or something. Yeah. And they call American Express and they're like, I don't know, do you, I need your, what was like, date of birth. Yeah. And I'm sitting there like, fuck. I said, you know what? I said, that's an excellent question. I pulled my wallet out, opened my driver's license, and I said, who am I today?

My name is Mark so-and-so, and my, you know, and I give him my date of birth the truth. I don't remember the date of birth. Like I'm like, and all the girl did was, she giggled cutely and told him the name or gave him the date of birth, and they said, okay, and they hung up the phone and went through. But my buddy was sitting next to me, and I'm telling you, he was shit in a brick. Oh, I bet. Oh, my God, bro. I was going to start running. No, be cool, man.

Yeah. Tell a little laugh, a little gleam in your eye. You've already called her dear a couple of times and you're good. Now, to this day, it's funny when I'm going out of the country, I'll still look at my passport before I get to immigration just to make sure it, A, it's the right passport. B, I've got my story right. Just add a habit because, you know, it's a thing, right? Yeah, I was going to say that has to, that kind of stress has to affect you in some way, give you some kind of new something. I'm not saying it's, you know, PS, you know, what is it?

PTSD or anything, but it's something. Well, you know, and the other funny thing, too, is you're talking about your credit cards. You just learn all these great life skills. Like it really helped me. Yeah, well, like at the end of the day, cash is king. You get away with all kinds of stuff if you got enough cash in your pocket. And so we used to talk about people like, oh, man, did you always carry a gun? Oh, did you always do this?

You always do that? I'm like, really, hardly ever. But you know what I always carried? Cash. You know what gets you out a lot of jam? cash very few things at the right amount of cash won't fix no matter where you are that's just you know it's just like it's funny we were we were shooting a sizzle reel the other day and and the guy right out this was actually funny because literally the guy that we're in we're interviewing

he says and this is my buddy danny we're we're putting together a sizzle reel for one of my one of my the books I wrote and you know to try and get a doc made right so this guy this we go and the guy's like listen we might need to hurry it up because I don't know if you notice there's it was in a huge condo right he is I don't know if you notice but they're doing construction outside like I mean literally right outside his his door he's like they're they're chipping up all the old tile and replacing it we're like right right right takes 30 minutes to get the mic on get the play with the cameras doing everything perfect and literally he sat there and Danny asked him a question he goes well I was like I like if like I mean if I if I if this wasn't

irritating like that would have been pretty funny like i was like honestly like you couldn't have time that and so danny has to go out and bribe the guy like he goes out he's like hey man we're doing this the guy's like yeah man we they know we're i have to do this right he's like i got nine he only 90 i got 90 dollars in cash right now yeah and the guy was like you give me another hundred and i'll shut this whole fucking place down yeah and he goes i will go get you the other hundred soon as we're done i'll get you the other hundred yeah he said no problem Now, see, that doesn't sound like a bribe. That sounds like a little bit of financial incentivization to get a desired outcome.

Yeah, it's true, though. It's true. It was just the same thing, cash. Cash. He's not going to take a cash app. No. So I was, a couple of weeks ago, I'm in a place doing a thing with some guys. And we needed to do a thing in a place.

And there's like a homeless guy standing there with, he's got all his bags. And he's asking for money. And we're sitting there like, son of a bitch, we need to do exactly what we need to do. right there right and so everyone's like what do we do what we do i'm like all right hold on hold on so i just grab a 20 walk over to the guy i'm like hey man i got a thing right here and i did i was like can i'm gonna give you $20 but i need you to fuck off and go around the corner okay and he's like but you're gonna give me $20 i said yeah he goes okay guess i'm going i said awesome and he walks away and uh it was just funny because you know it was one of those times

or like people like wow you just went up and talk to him and i'm like yeah he gave him 20 about stoned and fuck off and he did he's happy to talk yeah he's done and you know but i don't know i guess not everybody's equipped like that i guess i don't know i don't even i don't think about stuff like that right what's to me you know i think what happens is most people are more i'm not sure how to say this you know they're more sensitive they're more concerned like what if he said this what if he told looked me in the face and told me to fuck off like i'm okay with that it's not it's not i'm not going to cry myself we're not going to be any further behind than where we are right now exactly but honestly let him let's face it

most people just don't. They don't. They don't think like that at all. No. No. No. That's, I mean, that's probably my soon-to-be ex-wife said that was one of my superpowers. I'll ask anybody to do anything at any time. And it's one of those things. You ask enough people to do enough things. People are just going to say yes. Yeah. And some people just will not ask the question. And, you know, whether it's talking to somebody at a bar, whether it's asking for, hey, can I get 5% off of that? I did a real estate course one time and it was awesome. And the guy basically said, okay. To be a successful real estate investor, you're going to have to ask people for discounts. You're going to have to ask people for money back and all this stuff. He said, so here's

what we're going to do in this class. You got to go to Starbucks and ask for a discount on your coffee. And people are like, what? No, the price is the price. He goes, it's price and the price. Everybody's got some flexibility. You got to go ask. And some people just couldn't do it, wouldn't do it. And me, you know, walk in and get a free cup of coffee because you'll ask. You'll be funny. You'll do whatever you need to do. You have to be willing to be embarrassed. Well, that's it. And if you can get it, once you get over that, you know, the world opens up. No, I think my wife would say you have to have no shame.

Same thing. Well, how many times do I say that? I say that all the time. I say people are like, well, I don't want, especially with the whole con man thing, they're like, I don't want to finge. I'm like, listen, bro, for 13 years every two weeks, I had a guy when I would go to visitation to visit like my mom. Yeah. I would have a guy that would say strip down, spread your ass cheeks, bend over and cough. I'm like, do you think you can embarrass me?

like I'm done with that right right but we have a we have a our booking agent is named Tyler and Colby and I right like his superpower is he will walk up to anybody anywhere like what was the one where so what was the story where he's like you you guys were somewhere and somebody said oh that's so-and-so and he said oh you want to meet him and said here come on like and he was so confident about they thought is this is you right

that didn't you guys think oh he must know him right and so walked up said excuse me excuse me John oh you gotta meet

so and so and the guy was like okay yeah I started talking to him and two or three minutes in the conversation they all realize

you don't know this guy right you just walked up interrupted him in front of talking to two other people to introduce

us yeah but that's his am I right do I have that wrong or that's how he's the reason

he's the reason he's the reason I'm here really oh yeah Yeah, yeah, I'm talking to him on the phone. He's like, he's like, what do you need to get this podcast going? Because when I started for six months, I'm just talking to the screen to the camera. Hey, this is what I do.

And he's like, how do you, you know, I'm like, look, it's not working. I'm running out of stuff. I need to be able to interview people, but I need this and this and this. And he's like, well, I got, I'm going to find, I'll find somebody for you. I'm like, okay, you'll find somebody. Three days later, I got a guy. He's going to meet you. He lives in Lakeland.

His name is Colby. how does this happen like but but those are the people that get things done yeah the guys that not afraid to be embarrassed or ask for things and be told no yeah yeah absolutely absolutely but i don't know i don't do you do you learn how to do that or just a gene you're born with to me i learned it because i i think well for me it was it's funny too because this is a guy just jess has heard this because i just i just had dinner with this guy his name is david simpson and when I was 17 and he was I think he's like a year he was probably 15 or 16 and we used to drive around what you're in your 40s right yeah I self-identified as 28 year old but so yeah so we're driving around used to be yeah there's no social you know we yeah familiar yeah Friday nights you'd go to someplace like you know the mall or Burger King and guys would just drive around in their cars right or they would have a space where you cruise a strip exactly yeah um And David would be, we'd be driving.

He'd go, stop the car, stop the car. And he'd jump out. He's 15 years old. I'm 17 and can barely talk to a girl. He's 15. Would jump out, walk over to five or six girls, walk over and go, hi, my name's David Simpson. And the girls would be like, hi, I'd say, hi, I don't know if you have a boyfriend or not. I saw you and, you know, you're beautiful and I would love to get your phone number.

And listen, nine out of 10 girls were like, write the phone number down, give it to them, thanks. And he'd get up and get in the car. He'd say, keep driving. And I would be like, why don't you embarrass? What just happened? What if she said, do you know her? No.

What if she said no? He'd be like, I've never fucking seen this chick before in my life. I'm never going to see her again unless I call her. What are like? Well, she laughs. He goes, like, I've never been laughed at. Like, and I'm, he's 15 with that confidence.

And I realized, you're going to, he's like, what's the worst that happens? Like, I get embarrassed. So what? And I thought, you're going to have to start. You're going to have to. You're going to have to. That's how you're going to have to be able to meet girls. If you don't do that, you're never going to be able to meet these, any chicks.

I'm 17 years old. I had like one or two girlfriends my whole life. Those were sympathy girlfriends. Things felt bad for me. Well, you know, I think that question you're asking yourself right there is probably one of the most empowering questions possible. What's the worst thing that could happen if? And now, even if you add on the second one that says, what's the likelihood of that? Right.

I coach people and those are, if I ask them those two questions, It's very, starts getting very, very small. 100%. 100%, right? Is she going to pull out a gun and shoot you in the face? No. Is she going to laugh at you? Okay.

What's the worst thing that's going to happen? And how likely is that? Probably not. It's fine. Yeah, that's great. I love that. What is it the, I forget the saying how it is, but basically most people,

they, you know, they, basically they ruin themselves in their mind. The anticipation of what's going to go wrong is worse than their mind And then it ever, then it typically is in person. Yep. Typically, with the exception, I'm sure some things. Some things. I got another joke, but it was just perfect for this. This is a joke my dad told me, which lets you know the person my father was.

He said, there were two guys standing at a bus, bus stop. And this chick walks by and he goes, and one guy goes, he says, hey, baby, you want to go back to my place and have sex? She slapped him right in the face. The other guy kind of chuckles. Another girl walks by, he goes, baby, you want to go. back to my place, I'd have sex. Boom, she slapped him right in the, in the face. Another one walks by, hey, you want to go back to my place?

She slaps him right in the face. Guy starts laughing. The one guy looks at the other guy. He goes, man, you must get slapped a lot. He goes, yeah, but I fuck a lot of women. So, yeah, it's a numbers game. You know, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is.

So I have another question. Okay. So did you do your entire career in the Middle East? I mean, you learned to speak Chinese. You would think, I mean, at some point, were you able to? Well, I did the majority of my career in the Middle East, several Middle Eastern assignments, but I also worked in Europe. I worked in Asia.

Okay, so you did. At some point, you got to Asia. Yeah, I did. I mean, I spent a lot of time traveling to Asia. I wasn't assigned to Asia. Okay. But, yeah, and plus, even if you're working in the Middle East, you know, there are some targets or worldwide.

So, you know, having that familiar, having the familiarity that I did with that particular culture in that particular country, uh, didn't hurt me at all. Right. Yeah. So at what point did you, I mean, is there some, uh, pinnacle that you want to, uh, during your career you want to talk about or like, how did you eventually leaving the, leave the CIA? Yeah. You know, it's interesting.

I, uh, I thought I would never leave. Right. Right. I thought, you know, my goal I wanted to be what was called the DDO, the deputy director for operations. I was promoted fast. I had big jobs. Everything was going well. And at a certain point, I wasn't going to be able to go overseas anymore. I had a son. He had some health issues. And so overseas assignments weren't necessarily in my future. And so I was back serving at headquarters in Washington. And I realized, you know, there's, there's sort of the field cats and house cats and I wasn't much of a house cat I just wasn't a headquarters guy and I think the other thing was I got to the point where I just had a

lot of other interests wanted to do some other things and I said you know what at a certain point one time around life you know you get one time around the one time around the rock and all that good stuff and I just decided that that that it was time to do something else and so I did I had accomplished almost everything I wanted to accomplish in the agency. And I had been an Elon fanboy. Right. I thought he was amazing and I thought what he was doing was incredible. And people kind of knew that.

I mean, I had pictures of Elon hanging up in the offices that I ran overseas. Okay. You know, and so through a lot of... Listen, you're not alone, by the way. Right. Because my wife will tell you that I'm... I'd say 50% of my searches and the things I listen to in the shower getting ready are all about going to Mars and it's all about um Elon Musk and

you know a really good friend of mine right now we were talking about like what's your you know what's one of your lifetime goals or what's on your bucket list and I said going into outer space right and she said oh good Lord you know hers is well I want to be able to retire or whatever and no I'm same I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid what the heck's matter with that so did I but I'm nowhere near smart now oh same same my highest level level of math was actually called math. It was math three for life skills. I use it all the time. But yeah, no, I wasn't a big math guy or anything really. But yeah, no, so, you know, I had an opportunity to interview with Tesla and it was going well. For a limited time at McDonald's,

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It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. I exams provided by independent optometrists. And then I just started doing, you know, ridiculous things. When you're in a catbird position, I was in a great job with the agency.

I had been selected for another great job. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to make some ridiculous requests. I want to work from home. I want a lot of money. I want a lot of equity. I want all this stuff. And at the end of the day, it all came back.

And it was like, yeah, okay. So I told my wife, I'm like, I think I got to go. Yeah. and and that's what I did and I haven't looked back I mean there's aspects I miss like we talked about earlier we're not on the outside and you're not on the inside there's not that commonality you can't explain you know remember that time when right or going through these certain things people on the outside just don't understand that's okay because you still keep a lot of friends from the inside but uh I mean I miss that I miss the people I miss some of the work but for the most part I've been

really happy moving on and have got to scratch that itch i'll never have to go through life going way what if right you know what if i just was too afraid to make a jump i was too afraid to take that step i don't have to do that yeah um mostly well you know you know you you know obviously heard you know nobody sits at the uh you know what i'm saying people at the end of their life it's always the things that they didn't do that they regret right it's not the things they did and failed you know like i'll fail i got no problem with failing no listen i you know there's there's a lot of things i'll probably regret at the end of my life, whenever that may come. But one of the things is not not taking a chance. I've taken every chance there is out there and I don't regret it. I mean,

every stage in my life, you know, you take a chance. Just do it. And more often than not, it works out well. And if it doesn't, right, either win or you learn, sometimes you fail and you walk back and you go, well, that was, that was dumb as hell. I should have done something different. But I never have to ask well what if seemed like a good good uh seemed like a good uh seemed like a good uh seem like a good uh time in my life uh you'll probably cut this out but it's kind of funny i was in high school i went to a dance i went to a dance with this girl and she was gorgeous she was gorgeous and all i'm thinking in my head is oh man maybe we could end up dating or something like that and we're driving back to her place and she's telling me a story about how you know we're on this back country road and

that's the place over there where everybody always parks and and and i'm like oh i'm I'm just enamored over, and I finally, we get back to her place and, you know, whatever. And I'm driving home and I'm like, was she telling me? What in the hell? What was I thinking? Holy smokes, I missed the opportunity. You know, she was giving me the sign. And it's funny because, you know, I don't know, that was a few years ago.

And I still remember that. Because there's so few times when I'm like, I should have done this or I should have done that. Nah, I'm going to, I'll probably do it. And I may regret it. but I'll not regret not doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

I got a bunch of those times. So what did you do for Tesla? At Tesla, I worked on their insider threat program. I set up their insider threat program and I managed global information security investigations, which is a really fancy. I was going to say, stop it. Which is a really fancy way to say, I designed the programs to prevent people from stealing our intellectual property and confidential information.

And then I ran the investigative teams that when we had indications that people were stealing, we would investigate. And yeah, that's what I did. Hand-to-hand, I always joke hand-to-hand combat with people trying to steal information because left-right and left-right up and down, people trying to take information. Right, right. And that's just, I mean, that's just life these days. What was that, Jeff?

What is the lightball thing? with the light bulb for an application for a job you're filling out your resume yeah I change the light bulb you know what I'm talking about

yeah read it can you find it boy she's a horrible you know Joe Rogan's got Jamie right and he just he's on it before Joe Rogan say hey Jamie he's like I got it I already got it's already in his ear right

yeah I don't know man that's you just you know you know but I know it's the South I'm in the south and you know and I'm not Joe Rogan I love the South I love nothing wrong with the South now

I'm crying out loud I love Florida I love our governor and listen let me tell you something every time I say something like that boy the comments man people just hate hate oh man I don't even

politics or politics man it's all yeah hard pass hard pass do you find it okay listen to this this is for a resume uh-huh

you yeah yeah i'm not going to read it remind me by the way while she's reading that if you want to talk about fancy ways to say anything remind me to tell you about the time when i i actually uh performed the wedding ceremony for a temporary marriage for a guy uh and then bought him a hooker so he would pay uh so we could get information from him and the way i explained that in official correspondence but anyway go Go ahead. You really starting to read like me. beautiful right it's perfect it sounds amazing that's fine for an EA job or a marketing job

or any job really yeah that's how it sounded when you just explained that's what it sounded like yeah when you just explained your thing well it takes a little while to get that to roll off the tongue in a way that's you know sophisticated and savvy so so the um well see i i i i didn't pay for a prostitute listen listen no that sounds that sounds horrible that doesn't sound like something every good story starts off that doesn't sound like something every good story starts off it doesn't sound like something I would do now I did facilitate an extramarital affair with a professional one time and this is not something the CIA would do right yeah let's just say hypothetically right yeah hypothetically facilitated an extramarital affair with a professional and to do so right in

accordance with his religious traditions I had to perform the official marriage ceremony so that he was right with his with his God with his God yeah yeah yeah Yeah. People like, wait, did you, did you marry him to a hooker? I was like, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? Just for 45s. What are you talking about that? You know, the other one I think was my favorite one was, you know, sometimes you got to account for money. Yeah. Right. Some of the, my best espionage scenes, you know, in movies and things are like, receipts, receipts, I need receipts.

That's absolutely true. That is 1,000% true. And so sometimes you're not in a place where you're in a facility where they don't generally, it's not customer to provide receipts. and so that was my other favorite one when I had to do non-standard accounting I had to explain individual entertainers did not provide individualized detailed receipts for entertainment services rendered right right yeah yeah I mean it made a lot more sense of saying you know you don't get receipts for laugh dances yeah but you know it's for America for crying out loud mad I mean somebody's got to I understand it's horrible you don't have to explain to me I'm I'm with you listen listen listen you know it's not mother Teresa we're working with for crying out loud yeah I don't want to

be here it's a business meeting i just want to be home yeah i'd rather meet in a library maybe a church i don't know right good time yeah um so i do have a question yeah i do have a question late on me um and this is this is a listen this is a julian dory question by the way like this is the kind of thing that he asks all right because you're here okay so it's it's it's not a It's kind of on topic. Well, this is more military, but I think it's still relevant. I think you're still the guy to ask probably. Does China, this is off topic.

I know this. So you can make a TikTok of this, though. Okay, does China invade Taiwan? I watch stuff on this all the time. So I'm just curious, in your opinion, or do you not even pay attention to that? No, I pay attention. Yeah, no, I pay attention.

I don't know I don't know here here's the calculus right can we be distracted enough in Europe that they evade Taiwan and don't think that we're going to respond can they foster enough dissent within this country that we're so busy fighting each other right that we can't marshal our resources to respond to Taiwan are they full of so much hubris that they think that they can conduct a successful amphibious invasion of Taiwan and successfully take it over. That's not a foregone conclusion. I mean, anyone needs to read our history of World War II. That's not a layup. Right. Do they think we have the political will to respond? Now, again, I'm not a political guy, but I'll tell you, you know, if they look at our White House and say they're too weak,

they're not going to respond, we're going to do it. Or Russia has signed up that they will come to China's collective defense and they've signaled that to us and we don't have the perceived a real strength to deter it. You know, I think that, I think it's hard for me to imagine that they would, but I can't overstate the presidency of President Xi and his worldview and how the, how bringing Taiwan back under heel is in their strategic interest. I mean, look at Hong Kong, right, we signed the agreement, the Brit signed the agreement in 99, Hong Kong, you know,

that Hong Kong's going to maintain Hong Kong and everything's going to be honky-dory right up until the Chinese roll in and now Hong Kong is part of China if you don't think China's Hong Kong you know Hong Kong you haven't read the news you haven't read the press you haven't you don't understand what's going on there

Well you know you turn up the heat slowly You know exactly initially it's all I know it's good it's good No it's cool it's cool it's cool One change here and there And then before you know it it's China And now it's China Right

I don't know I sure hope not Well also I mean their economy Is just in free fall right now As much as they're making every single attempt to um to you know inflate or keep it keep it to appear that it's stable it's not so i mean but then i don't know like in the united states you start a war it's kind of rally around the chief you know i don't

know if it's the same thing there oh i think so you think i think so and i think you know i heard this described one time in a different scenario but i think it um it's the same uh Taiwan for china is a bone a fish bone stuck in their throat right if they try to swallow it down down, it's going to cause damage. If they try to spit it up, it's going to cause damage. It was just kind of stuck there. Right. Right.

They can't say that Taiwan is no longer part of China, but if they try to by force reincorporate it, either one is going to cause significant damage to China. So it's that fish bone that's just stuck in the throat right now. And I don't know. I mean, there's been some pretty significant things that have happened recently in global, uh, international security. But I don't know. Well, I think the best thing that the West can do is to show strength to China and say that

there's so many things that you can do for prosperity of China that don't include forcibly trying to reunify Taiwan. But that's a tough one. I don't know if they do or not. I mean, I watch, you know, I've watched tons of videos on it from, you know, historians to military experts to, and it's the same thing. It's like, you know, I don't know. I mean, But, you know, the whole problem is, too, it's like if they get, like, they could take it. But if the Taiwanese can hold them off for about three, because it takes about two to three days for the U.S. to get there, you know, so they have to hold them off for three days. That's a hell of a fight. Well, and what are we, but what are we willing to do?

Are we willing to spill blood in Asia over Taiwan? Now, there's a lot of times I would have said absolutely, right, because it's our security commitments. But some of the things that we're doing in the Middle East right now, I don't know. Right. We have American hostages. I always assume yes. I guess. Look, we have American hostages right now,

and we're not willing to go to war against countries that we could easily roll over if we decided to, but that's just not what we're doing right now. Okay. China, nuclear weapons, so there's a turret. Economic pain. I mean, it would be a huge decision. And our policy of strategic ambiguity works,

as long as they think that we've got a big enough stick and we're willing to swing it. Right. Now, I think it's to our favor that Russia is struggling so much in Ukraine. I think if Russia had taken Ukraine in a couple of days

no one had done anything, I think China would feel differently. But watching how the international community has rallied around together and is supporting Ukraine against Russia and the cost to Russia right now. But yeah, that's a hard one. I don't know.

Yeah, I like to gamble a little bit and I don't know if I'd put money on that. I'd probably hedge. Okay. As I'm doing here. Well, I don't think there's any clear, right? Unless you had some extreme, you know, insider knowledge that, you know, and I don't think anybody, I don't know that anybody does.

You know, there used to be a great thing we'd say in intelligence work. There's mysteries and there's secrets, right? Secrets you can steal. Right. Mysteries are things that, you know, they haven't even decided themselves. So if there's an op plan to take Taiwan and it's in a file. somewhere and they're on the timeline. That's a secret. But I really think this is a mystery. I don't think anybody's decided. You could have the person who's got the most exquisite

access. It would tell you this is exactly what they're thinking today, but that doesn't mean that's what's happening or not. I really think this is a mystery. And I don't know. I don't know what the, I don't know what the events would happen that would result in the physical attempt to take Taiwan. Okay. Okay. I, yeah, I definitely agree. I understand that. So I have another question. Yes, sir. And these are, these are so not true crime, not that this has been true crime, but still, I'm just saying. As we joked earlier, I would say I'm a patriot, but some people overseas would consider, you know, the acts that I did overseas is criminal, you know, violating their laws or whatnot. Um, details, details. So I have another question, which is, and it's really, well, I mean,

I think it's probably just, you know, because of the state of the union in general. Um, uh, and, just political unrest and the whole thing and the fact that my wife and I went and saw this movie. Did you see Civil War? Yeah. Did you see it? I saw that the other night. What did you think?

First of all, let me just preface this by saying this. There's multiple things that bothered me. One, I like a big budget. And obviously they didn't have the budget. The very end, when they go into Washington, that was great. But they didn't have a big budget.

So the way they got around that was, hey, let's have these guys to take, be just outside of the battle zone or the battles and we'll have them go through the, I thought for what they had to work with, I thought they did a smart way to, yeah. But what bothers me is you never know what the rift is that, that causes, first of all, Texas in California, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's just stupid. And so I think obviously they were making, they were attempting to say, let's not, let's not, let's be, let's my, let's not be specific, right?

obviously. And that definitely muddied the waters. But too, I would have preferred for it not to have been muddied for to be clear on what was the catalyst that caused this to happen. How did it happen? And then the entire and then of course the movie in itself or the story in itself as it happens. But they were so vague. That bothered me. But other than that, if you remove that, I thought it was pretty good. So I thought it was, the brilliance was in the avoidance. Right. They made a move. movie and there were maybe one or two little things. I'd be curious if you'd notice anything that led me to think that it was one party or the other, but you're absolutely right. They made that as apolitical as it could have been. They even introduced that element of the free

Western forces or whatever it was with California and Texas. Well, that doesn't make sense. Yeah. Okay, fine. I'll buy Texas. But California, come on. What are they going to attack with? Glitter? Get out of here. So there were pieces and parts of it that were necessarily conflating it. And I don't know. I thought, but the taboo for me that they broke and I thought what was so really interesting about it was that assault on Washington. And I think what's really fascinating, I love it when people say, oh, Second Amendment, who cares? You think your guns will stand up against tanks and planes. And my answer is usually you think that the people with the guns and tanks, you think with the people with the tanks and planes are going to be on your side.

And I'm not saying they are or I'm not saying they aren't. I'm just saying that's a closer, that's a closer call on what you would imagine. Yeah. And again, I'm not suggesting or encouraging sedition or anything like that or saying there's any seditious elements within our military. I'm just saying that the military necessarily is a reflection of our society. And to the extent that it's a 50-50 toss-up right now or it's close, you have to imagine that that extends to all elements of the government, including the military. No, I thought it was brilliant. Okay, so what did you think?

I saw a couple little things in there. What did you think? Well, one, it's funny because, you know, my wife and I talked about it, and I'm like, you know, first of all, one of the things is I said, you have to wonder if you're in the National Guard and you're being told to invade this other state or fight these, fight your fellow soldiers, because obviously I'm assuming that like the National Guards, one thing, I think that the National Guards within those states were fighting on. behalf of the state so it's not like the u.s. government said hey we're taking all the national guards and we're incorporating them we're going to pull them all back and you guys are going to fight us with pistols like that's not what was happening in my opinion the national guards within those states were under the of the of the governors in those states and they were fighting and taking of course more troops as you go but one of my issues is if if you're in the national guard

in you know in north carolina and you're being told to fight against south carolina like I'm not so sure that these guys are going to be, it might be like, hey, you know what? Like, I'm not going to do that. Like, these are American soldiers. Like, you're telling me to go in and kill, or, and these are American citizens. Like, even if I disagree with what they're doing, I'm not positive that you're about 50-50 on whether or not I'm going to fire on American citizens. And that's happened, right?

Like, in some cases, like, not that they didn't, not that Tiananmen Square, they didn't ultimately fight. But let's face it, when that college student walked out and stood in front of the tank, like, they were like, fuck, what do we do? Ultimately, of course, they fire on the. crowd but in a lot of these um you know revolutions or even when the soviet union broke apart right like these soldiers aren't willing to fire on and they're coming in they're coming in strong but a lot of them aren't willing to fight to to fire on their own russian citizens or ukrainians or whatever

at that time just because the unrest but here's one of the things i noticed one i noticed the guys the third he was the or the president it's his third term so that to me felt like they're there because that's one of the big buzzwords is Trump's going to try and become president for life okay whatever and two is so that was one thing and two when they said that the the photojournalists when they get to Washington like they're killing photojournalists they're killing them or not just journalists in general in Washington DC like oh you'll be executed immediately so I felt like they were leaning a little bit It made me feel like they were saying a Trump-like individual becomes president, goes for a third term, maybe that starts the war, he's executing journalists.

So it leaned a little bit that way, but it also leaned a little bit the other way, too. Like, you were just unsure. And I did like the fact that towards the end, when they were going into Washington, that they get the call where the U.S. says, we're falling back we're not going to fight for it you go ahead and take it like it's like we realize we've lost and they throw in the towel because i think that's true like hey if once we know it's over it's like look we need to know now we're going to be reincorporated into this yeah so i need to be looking out for myself now because we've already lost and do we really want to fight over washing these you know there's monuments there's history and it's a it's a done deal the battle's lost

yeah you know so you have a few pockets that we're holding out which i like too that they where the Secret Service was holding out. I'm like, how many guys are there? Right. I did like that. I mean, look, and that's a Secret Service. Yeah. You know, and call me an old school guy, right? If you work for the government, you're apolitical.

You serve it, you serve the party that's in power. And so the fact that the Secret Service was defending, again, spoiler alerts in here a little bit. But the fact that the Secret Service was defending the president all the way. Yeah. I actually like because that's their mandate. Whether they like them or not, that's what they're supposed to do. I agree. I agree.

And I like that. And I like, you know, and I do love the fact that, you know, and of course I've written a book about, anyway, about, you know, so I've done some research. So, but it's, it's just so, it's so funny because in a lot of, well, a lot of African countries in general that, you know, people think, oh, well, their military, well, look, most of their military generals, like, it's like their army, you know, they're supposed to be at the behest of the president of that country. but that doesn't always mean the way that that's not always the case but at least in the United States I feel fairly certain that you know that these that the generals that are underneath the president are going to listen to them like hey you're fired you know what I'm saying like in some of these these African countries it's like no I'm not leaving like that's a bad call on your part well and I think that the the rule of law and the US in our tradition of civil

control over the military is one of the things it is one of our greatest strengths and it's one of the reasons why, again, as apolitical as I am, I didn't love at the end of the last administration when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, oh, I was going to take nuclear power, nuclear weapons authority away from President Trump. Right. You know, I'm sorry, who the hell are you? Yeah. Who elected you? What do you, I'm sorry, who, who's the bigger threat to democracy now? The president that you disagree with, or you as a military leader saying that you were going to take the power away from the duly elected president of the United States. Right. That scared that. I mean, there was, I don't know, man, it's been a weird,

it's been a weird couple of years. Yeah, it has. And, you know, at a certain point, my wife used to say, man, we're really close to a civil, or this is the, this is as bad as it's ever been. I'm like, honey, literally we fought a civil war. Yeah. So let's, let's assume that's the work. Let's take a breath. Let's take a breath. But in the last handful of years, I'm kind of coming around to it where I can you can see pathways where this doesn't end well and I thought that was the most interesting thing about

the movie Civil War was it broke that taboo of that could never happen here it's sort of like all the times that the media would show us different images that it wanted to sort of it wanted it wanted to force down our throats of certain things could happen right right before that they

had actually happened but just to inculcate us that you know look this type of person could be in this kind of role or this type of person could be in that kind of role. It hasn't happened yet, but let's get everyone comfortable with it. Well, for me, watching this, that's the way I felt.

It was like, well, now we've got a frame of reference. Now we can envision what this would look like, whether you would agree or not, whether the president was left or right or whatever. But now, and even how it unfolds, you know, in my mind, it was something started from one of these states and as they're rolling across,

their recruiting active duty military elements that are fighting, going calling their buddies hey we're coming right do you are you on our side or their side we'll fight you if we need to but in a lot of ways i think if if the cause was just and righteous okay we all sworn oath to defend this country from all enemies foreign and domestic and there's been times in the recent history where i have felt very conflicted about that saying is this that time right do we have domestic enemies that are undercutting and uh the the the united states from inside and at what point if you've sworn an oath and that's your credo is it time to stand up

and say this isn't right this is that time that we swore that oath about and i never thought i never thought in a million years that you would be questioning that but i have really i can even remember at times i went back and pulled out my oath of office or my oath of service and read it back word for word and it's powerful and having to say now what's that mean who tells you when it's time that you have to confront domestic enemies yeah there's some big boy stuff going on right now and and i always say i miss being young when i used to know everything and the older i get the less i know and the less certain i am of things and and it's really hard right now to have your eyes open and your ears open and not to be concerned.

Yeah. And to associate a lot of the things that's happening in this country with things that we've seen overseas for years. Yeah, it's a banana republic. You know, oh, that's, this would never happen in the U.S. That would never happen in the U.S. da-da-da. And all of a sudden it's like, tick, tick, tick, tick, that's all happening here.

Yeah. Oh, it's insane. That, that to me is insanity. Like, it's the appearance, here's the thing. It's funny. Jess and I were talking about this. And it was like, I was like, what's amazing to me now is that they're not even, they're not even concerned. Like, about the appearance of propriety of anything.

Exactly. Like, like, you're not even concerned about how it looks at this point. Like, do you have such a, you feel so overwhelmingly confident and know that you have such a stranglehold that you can be, you can blatantly, um, you know, step, step side the, constitution you can make false out accusations you can do all kinds of things you can you know three what was it 350 million dollar fine like what are you doing are you insane like that's just it's just out of you're trying to break someone here when you should have been a few million dollar fine at best yeah and and i would say on on on on on every side uh i'm just waiting for you know we're the country of kennedy we're the country of regan

who is going to stand up and speak clearly and thoughtfully and you know and again like everybody else says this is what we've got yeah right now this is it 360 million and this is the best we've got come on man i don't buy it but but the policies the the process has become so toxic and so poisonous that no one who would want to run on either side in this environment you know you look back at a guy like colon pal why in the world didn't he want to run Do I think he had skeletons in his closet? No, do I think that maybe he didn't want to subject himself to having his reputation be smirched like that? Probably, I don't know.

But golly, Ned, we are, it's just too great of a country. It's too great of a thing we have going on for someone to not be willing to stand up and say what's right. And the vast majority of people say, I'm not on this extreme or I'm not on that extreme. I'm down the middle. Right. And why don't we have someone who can come right down the middle and say, you know, vote for rationality. Vote for reason. Vote for compromise. Vote for intelligence. Articulation. Energy. Youth. All these, this is America for crying out loud. Right. I don't understand it.

Listen, I mean, I don't mean you got worked up. No, no. I was just thinking we said right down the middle. I'm always, you know, I'm always saying like I feel like I'm fairly conservative, not extremist, but fairly conservative. But look, I'd like for health care. You know, like there's some stuff like, I hear you. I hear you. Wouldn't that be nice? But yeah. And I think it's hard not to be, you know, take a little bit of here, a little bit of there. It's just the extremes on either side of just... Look, I want someone to feed the poor. I'm not going to do it. But you're right. Somebody does have to do that. I hear you.

Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. So you don't, you don't see a civil war coming or maybe, maybe not. You're not sure. I didn't say I didn't see one coming. You're getting closer and closer to that. I just said the taboos broke.

Now we can envision what one looks like. Oh, listen, every time a Black Hawk helicopter, because you know, McDill's not far from that, right? So every time a black hawk helicopter, goes by, Jess takes a picture of it and sends it to me, she's, I'm telling you, something's going on. I'm like, it's a Black Hawk helicopter. I see them all the time. Yeah. No, I mean, I, I'm, I'm, I'm waiting anxiously about this fall and the way the election goes and the way the transition of power goes in ways that I've never been on eggshells or never been concerned about that process. Up until recently, I was never concerned about a democratic process,

right? We go, we vote. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Take the good, you take the bad there you go it's facts of life right but now i think on you know the the the the jiggling with the rules and the the the concern about the authenticity of the election on either side and the willingness to to give up the the ability to look at and go nope i know what's right i know what these people voted for but i know what's right so we're going to do that that is insanity that is frightening yeah and and yeah i i don't know how you can't be a little If you're not a little concerned, then I think your, your, your, your heads in the sand. And I'm not saying I'm stacking ammo or food or, you know, get my tinfoil hat all squared away.

But it's concerning. It's concerning. Listen, I got a ton of top ramen soup and we got a bunch of, um, uh, MRI, what, meals ready to eat? MREs, yeah, we got a bunch of MRIs. We only have like four of them. But still, we bought some. I just did it as a joke, you know, for, for, uh, Christmas, but she was thrilled. I got her a survival booklet.

got her some knives some special knives and the way to start fires without you know with no matches she's thrilled so she's so i got a concerned you know wife um i'm like i don't i just my problem is and i think everybody's heard me say this before you know to to jess when when she watches the walking dead like she's one of the survivors like i'm thinking i'm one of the walking dead like i'm not going to make it like when she sees like a post apocalyptic thing i'm thinking i want to be right under the bomb and she's like no i want to survive i don't we're going to rebuild them it's going to suck like i'd rather just you know because i don't see i don't want to be get poison be die slowly like just just put me right under that fucker i you know i don't know i mean

i uh i hate to even think like this but you know if if if all that happens fine i've got i've got some land i've got a thing i just just leave me alone yeah i'll go right back to my libertarian roots of just leave me alone i'm not there yet Right. I'm good. I'm good. Just leave, just, I'll be cool. You be cool. Go do your thing. Just, we'll just be cool here. And if you want to come live with me and be cool, we'll be cool together. It's fine. We don't have to, but, you know, a little, don't try it on me, a little. I still need, I need an acre. I need a bunch of solar panels. I need water filtration. I'm working. I'm going to work on that. I got to work on that. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm not, I'm not, I don't get too over the, over the, over the bend, around the bend on that. But at the same time. Yeah, most days I'd just rather be just left alone. Just let me do my thing. Listen, the next year is going to be interesting. Yeah.

It's going to be an interesting year. Well, we're already, yeah, we're already into it. Yeah. What is the closest call? Like, do you have a story about, like, your closest call with, I don't know, like, someone finds out you're an agent or maybe. Yep. All right.

So first off, first off, we are not agents. Okay. Okay. So CIA officers are officers. When the media gets this wrong, it drives me nuts. FBI, special agent, secret service, special agent, DEA, special agents, CIA officers, or officers, the people that work for us are our agents. And so, not that I'm not hating on you.

I'm just, you know, that's a very, it's a very fine line. And when anybody starts any kind of show or anything like that and talks about CIA agents, I'm like, these guys are amateur hour. They don't even know what they're, they don't even, they don't have the ticket to the right movie, right? So one, two, what's my closest call? That's a good one, because there have been some close ones. There's a couple of different ways, right? I mean, I was in places where, you know, bombs went off that were close.

I don't know if that counts. I can remember one time, everyone was like, oh, my gosh, how many times did you fire your weapon? I'm like, I never fired my weapon, right? But I could sure, sure, sugar, remember that time I was stuck in traffic, and I had a pistol in the small of my back, and somebody got out of a car sitting right in front of me and came right back at me. And I was out of my pistol and through the window at him,

right through the front windshield at him. and the guy gets his keys out of his pocket and goes back and opens up the trunk. And, you know, your heart's like, and again, it's one of those things. Well, that doesn't sound very sexy. You were in traffic and a guy looked like he was going, and it looked like, you know,

in one of those circumstances where he just gets out and pumps you full of, full around. Anybody who's listening is like, I don't remember reading that in the cable. I think we're supposed to write cables for every time you draw your weapon. Yeah, whatever, dude. No, didn't get a chance to write with that one up.

But, yeah, no, there were a lot of time. I mean, and then the rest of it, I work with people that got compromised and killed. You know, so close calls, I mean, you know, it is what it is. I mean, there's some calls that weren't even close. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And if you're playing a big boy game, you're not throwing no hitters. I would say, gets a vote, and sometimes people don't do what they should do. And, uh, were there?

You live with those people the rest of your life, you know, at least in your mind. I was going to say, do most of the time when you've talked to somebody, you've said, look, we need, you know, if you ever came across this, because I understand there's your, I mean, from what I understand, which is nothing, but you don't ever get to the point where you're, it's like, hey, listen, I'm with the CIA. It's more like, hey, if you ever just wondering if it's all kind of a massage, right, like a slow. If you ever were to come across this, I could get you some cash. And then at some point, they realize who you are and what. what's happening, what you're asking. So. No, it's absolutely wrong. No? Okay, cool. What is it?

No, bro. So when we start, it's a massage, right? Right. I like the way you described that. It's a massage. No, when we start, it's like that. But when you're done, if you're doing your job, I've looked you in the eye and you know what you're doing and who you're doing it for

and what you're doing it for. And we're having that conversation. And I'm even so far as, I mean, it's, it's. no it's 100% clear okay well i mean i kind of assume that but i didn't know like i mean i'm suiting at some point they're like and not all services work like that some services always work with a fig leaf or there's there's sometimes where you leave a little of ambiguity to it but no if you're doing your job right at some point they're like they know what you want you know the person is 100% cooperative with what you're trying to do and becomes a co-conspirator right now

it's hard some people can't quite get there but If you're doing it right, that's what you're doing. There's zero disclarity about what's happening. Zero. And it has to be because you have to be able to talk to them and say, here are the ramifications. This is why. If you don't do this right, you are going to swing from the bottom of a crane

and I'm not guessing. Right. And if you don't have the stones to do it, that's okay. I would rather you tell me, bro, that's not for me. I'm out. I can't do that. Right. Now, I'm not going to say this on the first meeting or on the fifth meeting or anything like that.

I'm not going to scare the hell out of you. But at the same time, if I'm being professional and I can sleep well at night knowing that I've told people, if you don't do X, this is going to happen. And they didn't do X, and that happened, and I sleep well at night. Right. Because I did my job. I gave them every chance to be successful. And if they weren't, I don't know what to tell you.

But no, absolutely. That's part of our ethos, part of our professionalism. You know, we owe that to the people that we're working with. So they understand the dangers. They understand the ramifications, but a lot of the people we work with are working on the side of good, are working on the side of darkness, or I'm sorry, on the side of lightness against the darkness that is their home country, that is their government. They know that by working with us that they're going to favorably be able to change things

in their country and they're taking that risk. These are people that have enormous courage, enormous courage. I can't say enough about it. Whenever I hear someone's like, oh, he's a snitch or he's a rat or how dare. they do this out there they do that off office fight i'll fist fight because these people that i work with uh i mean you can feel it from me all my all my my my my my my support you know because these are people that are in really tough situations and i would hope that if we're ever in that situation ourselves that we would have the courage and the strength to do what these people did

and so i don't know how i got on this tangent but golly ned i mean i just Just, no, these people are, they're heroes and they're unsung. If you think we're not known, there's actually, it's really awesome. There's a new memorial at CIA headquarters for agents that have lost their lives working for us. These are foreign agents that are cooperating with them. And the monument's really small, and it's in a discrete area. And my favorite part about it is it's like a white-on-white monument. So you really have to look for it to see it.

But if you know what it is, it's for all the people that have worked on behalf of our nation, secretly and have lost their lives. And it's, yeah. No, and I don't, because I don't want to denigrate their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their memory because these are people who knew exactly what they were doing. I'm going up against, I know my government's going to put me in an oven and burn me to death if I get caught because they showed me my colleague, they showed me the video of my colleague, they did that too. That's true story, Soviet Union back in the day, right?

Or I know because. I used to capture and torture people. And now for whatever reason, I'm not doing that anymore. Right. These are people who know exactly what they're doing and take the risk anyway. And it's, that's amazing. It's amazing. Oh, I was thinking about the, the, not to get all, you know.

No, no, I was going to, I was thinking about like, uh, like, was it Aldrich Ames? Yeah. Like, I was think about like, yeah. Like, he just, he just gutted. The depths of the depths of hell. For these traders, Ames and Hansen and Snowden and some of the other ones, I mean, yeah, I don't know how you can do it. I don't know how you can swear an oath and work with these people and have met these people

and know these people, these people that are working on our behalf and then turn around and sacrifice them. You know, to protect your own, to protect your own ass. Not even protect you. It was just, well, I mean, all of them's money. Well, I mean, all of them's money. But when Ames gave the big dump to the Russians in meeting three, he knew that he was going to sell out the country. He knew he was doing it for his financial gain, but then he deliberately took the step to identify every single one of the people that he knew about in the Soviet Union who could

have exposed him. And that was the big dump. And then they just went right down and decimated all of them. I just, I can't imagine. I can't imagine. I mean, I can't imagine being a spy to begin with, being a traitor like that for a country like that. Again, I'm not talking about, you know, you live in a country that's a horrible repressive repressive regime. You know, you work and you live in Nazi Germany and you volunteer to the Americans, the British or the French or something during the war. I can

understand that. Right. I just can't see going from goodness and going into the darkness just for money. I mean, that's yeah. Darkest depth of hell for those people. And he was older than, old, uh, old, his name was what? It was like 20 years or something. He worked for the, uh, it was the FBI, too, right?

No, that was Hansen was work. Hansen was with FBI for 20 years. Ames. Yeah. Alder James was a CIA officer. He was, when he volunteered to the Russians in 1985-ish, he was in a senior counterintelligence position within our Russian operations at headquarters. So he was in a position to basically disclose all of our Russian agents to the KGB, which

he did. And then he went on spying until 1994. And then Hansen worked for the FBI, but on the Russian desk? Hansen was basically the equivalent of aims within the FBI. So he worked on Russian counterintelligence for a long time and for 20-some-odd years he spied for the Russians. But he had information about the CIA, right? He had inside information, and that's why it was such a problem

because anything that would happen, they would think, oh, it's got to be an issue with the CIA, but it wasn't. It was because it just passed through his death. And that was the problem that they both had such similar access. Right. That once we got Ames and identified Ames, We're like, okay, we're good. And then you start doing the math.

You're like, wait, there were some FBI-only operations or other operations that Ames wouldn't have had access to. We've got another problem. Right. And, no, it's, it's, yeah, it's complicated. It's complicated. Good question, though. Like, negotiation tactics.

Like, is money pretty much the main thing that you use? Awesome. Great question. Is money the main, motivator. Money is never a motivator. Really? Money is never a motivator. It's what you can acquire with money. And I always used to say, you're lazy. If you say, oh, he's motivated by money. Bullshit. He's motivated by, he's got a kid that needs to go to college. He's got a sick mom and he needs to buy medicine for. He wants to keep up with the Joneses. Money is a vehicle to get to an end.

Understand the end and you understand the motivation. If you just say money, well, that's not it. right it's got to always be something else right and maybe it's just ego maybe it's just a game maybe it's just the thrill and money's a way to keep score but money's never i don't know for me why people would do this i always used to say it's a mosaic of motivations it's never just one thing it's usually a lot of different things that result in somebody making these kind of decisions but yeah and money's money's an intellectually lazy one uh it's it's it's that other thing you know It's what they can use money to do. Okay.

Great question, though, because people have money. Yeah, I tell them I'm in a class. I tell people that. If you think it's just money, look past it. What is it? Right. Because it's something else. It's something else.

Yeah, it's something else. Exactly. Something else. So what's like the average duration or maybe the longest that you're like working on a single case or single person? Long as you need. That's a great question. I know.

This guy, man. I know. I know. Genius. That's why he throws. them out there sometimes. Through this guy's genius. What's the longest I would work on a case? Well, I would say flippantly as long as I need. You know, I mean, if I can do it quickly, I'll do it quickly. If I can do it long, I'll do it long. Maybe it's years. Maybe it's long period of time. Maybe it's been a series

of people over multiple years and multiple people working on the same person. Or maybe it's multiple people working on one person in different ways to try to maneuver that person around to get him into the right spot. What's the average? No, I was just going to say, great question. I was just going to say now all that said usually you know pretty quick right if if you've been around you've done it you could just you kind of feel you know and and and a lot of mind you just knew kind of there's still steps you have to go through and you can't go too quick or it makes people nervous but but you know pretty quick you know months a handful of months something for me if it's dragging on years probably's not going to get done or get done

in a way that you wanted to get done yeah I know I was just going to say like things that things that are going to get done typically happen very quickly. Yep. Even if it takes a while to formalize it, intellectually or across the transom pretty early. What are some of the signs that you can tell, like, someone's going to be able to help you or not help you? Oh, great question. What's a sign that someone's going to be able to help me? Well, the first thing is they've got something that will help me.

You could have a million people, all of whom are go America and want to help as much as they can. Well, if you're not in a position to have anything of value, you know. So that's the first thing. You've got something of value. can be all kinds of different things but that's the biggest thing do you have something of value do you have something I want

and not me do you have something we want that would benefit us that's the biggest thing but if they do what's is there something specific oh well I mean you know access to different types of information or to an area

or to a thing or something like that no no I mean but what makes me what makes me yeah what makes me yeah yeah yeah like you talk to him and you're like oh he's got it we know he has a girlfriend

we've listened to some phone calls she she needs money to go to school he doesn't have it that's the avenue that yeah that's what he's asking uh let me give you the let me give you the textbook answer and then i'll riff just just a touch i won't go too too too too much but just a touch right so the textbook answer is mice right money ideology compromise or ego that's what all the counterintelligence books say blah blah blah money ideology compromise or ego i'll tell you right up front compromises and all that effective because you know you don't want someone to be there that doesn't want to be they're not going to be very good for you money yes but you heard me talk about that earlier money's a vector ideology is great but if you're ideologically motivated

but you're a coward you're not going to come across for me ego ego more so than anything else you've got to have the courage and you've got to be willing to act because people have the right access people are in the right position but it takes a special kind of person to actually step up and do it like we talked about before not everyone's got that gene not everyone's got that the willingness to do it I don't have the ability even if they have the opportunity they don't have the ability so ego for me is people who have big egos and humbly speaking probably because I understand well I think probably some people would say well you know why you like ego so much because it's pretty easy for you understand.

Fine, whatever. But, no, I like ego. And what do you do? You just play to it. Just play into it. Like, you could, you could get that. You can't, you don't have the ability to get this. No, well, I mean, look, I mean, you know, everyone's got different styles.

And, you know, for me, I'm just curious. I'd love to learn about things. And you know what? I tend to find people who are experts in areas love to tell you about what they're experts in areas of. And there's all kinds of other different techniques. Right. Yeah.

Now, other countries trying to flip Americans or American officers, agents, whatever. Like, does that happen? Is there a unique thing that, like, they look at? I mean, yeah, we just. Yes, it happens. A couple of those examples. Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely happens.

Look, it's a, we would be naive to think that Americans are not going to commit, unique. We're uniquely inoculized against, you know, espionage. Now, back in the day, right, back in the Cold War, maybe it's ideological. Maybe you've got some kind of, you know, issue with your mind and you think communism's okay or socialism's okay or Hamas is okay. But, so it happens. But, I mean, yeah, it absolutely happens. Like, Americans have access with the greatest power in the history of the world right now. We could argue about where we are in that arc, but right now. And so everybody, everybody's

interested in what we say, right? But yeah, no, it's same, same, right? Money, ideologically. ideology, compromise, ego, same sort of things. And Americans are susceptible to it just like anybody else. And in a lot of ways, we're even more susceptible because of how free our society is and how trusting we are and how many people there are and how many targets there are. And, yeah, we have a huge attack surface here. You know, ideally we're doing a nice job of motivating people

to stay on the straight and narrow, but in all walks of life, right? sometimes people want to cut corners to get ahead and, you know, if your currency secrets, you know, maybe you think it's a good idea to try to sell them. Not, we'll catch you. We will catch you today, tomorrow, later. Yeah. What a horrible life that would be to live. You're an American like that.

Because there's no argument that you are coming from the darkness to the light. Right. You are starting at the light and you're moving toward darkness. Whatever that darkness looks like. There is no righteousness in there. there's none right if you're a north korean or you're russian or you're a chinese and iranian or whoever right you're going from darkness to light but if you're starting off in america you're in the light man right you can't argue that it's anything other than the darkness in your

soul that's taking you toward the shadow in my humble opinion oh well well i was going to say there's a bunch of college students i'm sure out there right now that we'll tell you you know vastly different but then again they don't really have a clue either do they no um they don't understand They've been told that lightness is dark and darkness is light. Nothing has meaning anymore anyway, and everything's relative. And it's just not. There's good and evil and light and dark. Right.

And they're confused. I was going to say the same country that gives you the ability to bitch and moan and protest. You're protesting against. Like, that doesn't make sense at all. Unless you have another one, I have a question. So I have a question, and there's probably no real answer, but... Here's what kills me is so and I've interviewed someone a few months ago about this like I said earlier He didn't know anything in he had almost no understanding of it at all but so my understanding is and I know it was something like

I don't know what was it 60 or 200 million I forget the number but but the the North Koreans actively have a department where they are running multiple types of scams right but one of the them is like based on cryptocurrency and periodically they'll break into one of these reserve or i'm sorry these um cryptocurrency exchanges yeah exchanges and they'll get a bunch of money and they don't always get it they don't always get that not money but they're crypto um but it's a constant thing and the united states knows it and it's obvious and they can even tell you what building they're in and they can tell you exactly what's happening and who's on the team and you know the whole thing just like they can with the chinese so here's what what kills me and it's the same thing with a

Well, in a way. I mean, there's theft of intellectual property on the part of China blatantly. They blatantly steal it. Like, is there a way to, let's just stick with the cryptocurrency thing. Is there a way to shut that down? And if so, why doesn't the United States shut it down? Like, it doesn't make sense to me. Yeah.

North Korea funds the majority of their government operating. by stealing cryptocurrency or stealing money from overseas. North Korean government isn't of itself a criminal enterprise. Right. If you're a North Korean civil servant, part of your job is raising revenue,

generating revenue to keep the government going. It's really a fascinating case study. And there's one thing to know that people are out there doing this. There's another thing to be able to stop it, right? If you've got access to the internet, then you've got access to conduct this kind of crime.

Let me tell you about, have you heard of cryptojacking? Did we talk about that before? I mean, I'm not sure of the term. I've heard North Korea described as Israel of the dark side. They punch way above their weight. Let me tell you about this one thing that they do. Crypto jacking is a derivation of cryptocurrency mining where you put malware on someone's computer.

Now, instead of stealing information or locking the information up and conducting ransom, what you do, you put a program on their computer that uses the Slack computing space on their computer to mine cryptocurrency. Every one of us has had where you're working on your computer and it's running a little slow or a little sluggish and you're like, oh, I've got too many tabs open on top. Or you go into your office at night and the fan and you're thinking,

oh, maybe it's just an update. Maybe so. Or maybe you've been infected by North Korean malware and they're using your computer to mine cryptocurrency to create money, currency value out of thin air. millions of computers together. Well, we know this. We know the statistics on it are egregious,

egregious about how often this is happening. Why don't we stop it? Well, all you have to do, update the security on your computer. Stop using Windows 7. Stop, you know, update the patches that are out there. But how do we stop that? As a government, if we know that's happening, why don't we stop it? Well, what do you stop?

How do you stop it? Do you stop the internet? Stop things going back and forth? I mean, a lot of ways, North Korea is so good because they are, finding all these different ways to generate income through theft and through crimes and scam. That was the most recent one. We found out that they're illustrating comics for Amazon or for a couple of HBO or somebody that North Korean workers are actually conducting work as you hire a gig worker on the economy

or a fiber person or something like that. Well, now the person you hire may be a North Korean and what are they doing? They're illustrating cartoons. Right. Well, technically, that's a violation of sanctions and you can't employ. North Korean labor, but, uh, no, they, they are, they are exceptionally motivated. Uh, they are, they are well resourced. They're well equipped. They're smart. Um, generating income for, for the regime. It's, uh, it's, uh, yeah, it's kind of wild. Right. And I don't want anyone

to think I, I admire them. I admire the pluck. I admire their chutzpah to do it. I admire their, their, their, their resilience, uh, their innovation. You know, obviously, so we want to crush them. Not because we don't like Koreans or, you know, whether you're north or south of the 38th parallel. We just don't like people who are threatening and trying to ransom the world with nuclear weapons. Give up your weapons, come back to the world.

Yeah. Let's all be cool, man. Look South. Look how awesome that is. All the electricity and food. Yeah, I was going to say, have you ever seen the pictures at night? It's insane.

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I mean, South Korea is lit up like a Christmas tree, and there's like four dots in North Korea. That's correct. I mean, yeah. It's horrific. Like, you don't even have electricity.

Yeah. Yeah. For the operations, like, how much of it has to be in person, on foot in the field, as opposed to digital technology, things like that? This guy, man. He's way smarter than me. This guy. Look, in the old-fashioned day, everything was in person, right?

You don't want to do anything impersonally. In today's world where people live the majority of their lives online, I would say that you wouldn't be wrong to think that there's a blended cyber. and human element. I mean, there's always going to be a human element because at a certain point

I need to look you in the eye. I need to ask your really awkward question and then I need to be able to put my hand on your knee and say, Matt, it's going to be okay. We're going to be able to do this.

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You couldn't really put a percentage on it. But certainly using the full spectrum of communication and interaction would be appropriate these days. I have never talked as publicly about these things as we have. I've seen a bunch of interviews with you. You've got some interviews on that. Oh, no, no, no. I've talked publicly. But I talk about finance or I talk about cryptocurrency.

Or I talk about this or I talk about that. I don't talk about the essence of what we do. Right. Right. Now, I haven't disclosed. anything i mean there's no secrets here no right that you couldn't read in the book or you couldn't see or whatever i just it's odd for me because it's highly personal right right talking about the way i feel about some of these things and talking about the stuff that doesn't convey to the silver

screen right but you even saw at one point you know the hair on my arms are standing up you know this is a very it's a very personal intimate thing and they're uh if if friends of mine or family of mine listen they're going to hear things they've never heard me say before and they're my friends and family right uh you didn't ask me about that right so while i was active before i was able to roll my cover back uh my parents knew what i did but my brother and sister did not really yeah because they didn't need to i mean it was just unnecessarily burden burden them all right and that was a big thing between me and my wife regarding her family and her family's knowledge about what i did they didn't have any to know right you know it didn't materially impact their

business at all. What did they think you did? They thought that I was a, I won't necessarily get into this part, even though it's ridiculous. Everybody knows. But they just knew that I was a government official that was assigned overseas to our embassy in various places. Okay. That's it. And I had a day job. Actually, I had a big day job. You know, I would do all this stuff and I would have to talk about why what I was doing was so important and how interesting it was. And a lot of times I'd, yeah, want to slam my head in a safe drawer because it was so boring. But that's a price of admission to do what we really do and our job doesn't start until at night or in the mornings or on the weekends right right and you're doing a normal job like at the cover-up basically i mean it would be

reasonable to imagine that if you're at a place somewhere you've got to be able to explain what you do during you know to normal people so yes yeah i mean i mean to me what you know what they always say is like they'll you're working in the embassy or working in some government body for the United States in a foreign country but you're you're a you know you take applications for visas

or you know that's what your cover is or something like that or maybe you actually work someplace else that's connected somehow they get you a job doing something that's you know whatever in a hotel or in a whatever in an engineering store or something

and you're doing something that so it makes sense why this guy's in our country how he's here he works in an engineering firm stands to reason that you've got to be able to explain why you're living somewhere and how you make your money and all that stuff you can't just say can't tell you that doesn't yeah that's not helpful so why you're doing that do you still have like once you kind of learn like the ends and outs and like they will carry a conversation of what you do do you still have like roles and responsibilities that you have to meet in that normal nine to five job or so no no no no no no no and it all depends right it depends but uh yeah you could imagine if you have a story that you're doing something in a country generally you have to do do that thing in the country or else it doesn't die yeah that's that was that's the other piece that's really funny it's like oh man I just spent 10 hours at work today uh now I get to start my real job yeah that's and that's just that's just life that's just life and that's yeah

that's just how it works now you uh as far as pay is concerned like compensation like is that like a bonus added on or is that already included in your role no there's no you don't get paid for two jobs you get paid for your job yeah yeah no that's just you just you just have the opportunity to do a whole another job what is the and people usually like it when we're doing the other jobs for them because we generally are better than the people they have working for them we're always you know no matter what we do we're usually pretty good i mean and again not because we're awesome just because the quality of people that we work with are always pretty high and so even if my day job is selling water bottles i'm probably going to be one of your top water bottle water bottle salesman right but i don't get any

money for that right i still get my same salary no that's bullshit yeah yeah we got to talk about that no um well it's it's what it is what it is man you know i mean it's life i was gonna say uh did you have family members like come on like are you CIA are you FBI you know uh I'll tell you I'm embarrassed I'm embarrassed to tell you this story um this is the best stories yeah it you do right you do and I I ultimately peace be upon him uh love my dad but when I originally started I only wanted to tell my mom because my dad is one of those guys he's super proud of you yeah right so he's going to go down to the you know to the horse barn and tell his buddies about you know whatever and so I didn't want to tell him my mom's like you can't

you can't do that to me you've got to tell him so I told him I was like dad you got to be cool man be cool right and you know he was always cool but then like his brother my uncle was always kind like oh yeah you're really this that and the other I'm like no I'm not I'm just a normal I know you're you're probably disappointed in me hell I'm disappointed in me hell I'm disappointed myself i'm just normal this guy well okay that was bad but with my wife's family it was even worse because they were starting to be like oh no we know we know and blah blah blah and they're on the phone talking about this when i'm overseas and that's not helpful at all right and so we're back on thanksgiving and i brace him bad and basically you keep saying he's this and he's not he's really

this and he's so proud of being this and you keep saying that he's that and you're basically saying And what he's doing is not important enough. And it really hurts his feelings. And I had to go through this whole thing about how I was so proud to be in this position. And every time you said I was doing something else, it hurt my feelings. And you're like, oh, man, we feel really bad. We're really sorry. You know, gosh, you're all right.

That is, that is great enough. And then like, like, 15 years later when I was like, no, I really did this the whole time. They're like, oh, fuck you. You know, I'm like, well, dude, I couldn't have you flapping your sandwich clamp on the phone when I'm overseas. Right. It's a matter with you. Of course, I'm not dushy like that. No, I'm like this.

But come on. not that that first thing's douchey it's it's a great advocation for the people that do it it's just different um it's like saying you play violin or drums both are equally pleasurable but you know different drums in like aerosmith not drums in like whatever anyway like listen like i'm at home all day and i get the why are you on your phone like aren't you done working can we watch tv can we this and you're telling me you're working 40 hours a week and you get home and you're working another whatever even if it's 20 hours

or 40 hours another like how many CIA agents marriages fail as a result of that because that's got to be CIA officers of officers come on come on Matt you're better than that man you're better than that you're better than that no because I want you the next time you talk to a guy like me I want you to be one of those guys officers officers officers you know I don't know we always joked about that like to be full performance. You either had to have a divorce or have a heart attack or something like that. You know, otherwise you're not really a fully developed officer. I had my heart attack before I actually got divorced. But I think a lot of people probably, I mean, look, it's America. Right. Two, two thirds of every divorce ends in, or every marriage is in divorce.

If we factor in all the second and third divorces and all that, it's hard. You've got to have a, you've got to have a different kind of relationship. Because it's not that I'm working 40 hours in one job and then I come home and work 40 hours. hours in another job. It's I work 40 hours in one job and then I go work my other job. I don't come home. Right. Right.

I can't imagine that. And now the good news was back when I was doing it, there's no cell phone. Right. I'll see you when I see you. These kids today, man, they go on these work trips and they've got to figure out how they're going to manage your social media and how they're going to manage your cell phone. Back in the day, you go on the dark side of the moon. Hey, I'm leaving.

I'll see in a couple of weeks. Oh. And, you know, I'll be back when I'm back. And I can't know. can you call and check in? No, I can't. That's not the way it works. And so you've got to have a different type of spouse that can put up with that. And a lot of people don't. So it ends in divorce or it ends in people who shorten their careers overseas more quickly because it's really hard on a marriage. There's a reason why a lot of the senior officers in our organization tend to be

single people. You know, it's, oh, it's because they're single men. No, it's because they're miserable people who don't have a family and they're so dedicated to the mission. And I can a two or three of them. It doesn't mean they're bad people. It's just they've chose to prioritize that over over work life balance. It's all this all this nonsense about work life. There's no work life balance. Right. There's no work life balance. You've got to believe in your heart that you're doing what you're doing the benefit your family, even if it's, and all the other families out there, even if you're doing it at the at the sacrifice of your own family or your own health or your own whatever. Because we, that's it. We give it all, you give it all back. You're not

doing any of this for you because you're not getting rich. Well, hell, we could make and I've been proof you can make 10 times as much money on the outside and i used to i'd talk to people and i'd be like you don't work any harder than me and i'm not really sure you're that much smarter than me but you just drove up to this meeting in a bentley and i drove up in a honda accord not there's anything wrong with that right but it's oh man but you've got to just be willing to give and give and give and be very selfless to do what we did and uh yeah i don't think that makes them that's a life you know same for cops and firefighters and military people there's a lot of people like that I don't say we're unique.

I mean, a lot of people like, I was going to say, I don't think that makes them bad people. It's just that you're in a job that it's like, it's like, it's the spouses are like, like, I signed up. I said I'd be okay, but let's face it after a year or two. It's like, you know what, I can't do this. And it's not that they're bad people, but it's like, hey, you know, my, my girlfriend, you know, Jennifer, her husband's home at 5.30 every day, you know, they're going on vacation. They're doing this. She can text them or call them at any time. Like, it's got to be like, for them, it's just like, I just can't do it.

So it's not that I think that these guys are bad, but you know, you, you know, and I think everybody has good intentions, you know, when it starts. And then you get two years down the lower, it's just, it's just tough. Yeah, it's tough. And it's tough. And that's life. And, you know, as I used to tell my, my soon-to-bex-y, I am what I am. I wouldn't be any different if I was a detective or if I was a lawyer or if I was a doctor. You know, and I think some people, I will say the agency is a, a tremendous career for workaholics right and people who are just insanely you know and i don't know we could say it's undiagnosed adult ADHD or whatever everyone wants to label something these days but uh that i that's just the way i was wired and that's the way people that are really successful are wired i mean it's like if you and i are both doing the same thing and that you work for 40 hours

and i work for 80 hours i'm going to be twice as successful as you are except more because i'm going to get an additional experience people are always like well but it's not fair we should be at the same position because we both have been in this the same time. Bro, you work nine to five, and I work nine to 12. Right. And not nine to noon. You know, why would it? I was, you know, when I was in the war zone, I can remember at one point, we were working

about 120, 130 hours a week. And you do the math on that. And you're like, wait a minute, how many hours are there in a week? Right. And you're like, yeah, we're sleeping barely. And when we're not, we're working. And I had other people that were in nice, you know, I'm in a European post and I work nine to five and they're like hey why are you getting promoted so fast i'm like it's not because i'm smart

and it's not because i'm even any better but if i'm getting three years of experience for every one year you're getting it's just math right it just works out anyway and yes that has its impact on your relationships and it's not without cost what are you doing now you're you're like you work for you're saying you worked for uh tesla yeah and then you left there so what are you doing now uh I have a private intelligence and security company. And our company, we provide bespoke, discreet solutions for appropriate clients. What? What you do?

You describe what? Just, you know, it's very clear, Matt. Listen, it's very clear. Let me give it to you one more time. It is very clear. We provide bespoke discrete solutions for appropriate clients. I have a fairly good vocabulary. Fairly good.

Yeah, listen. Not the best. Super clear. You know, on my t-shirt. guy. Yeah, I'm the guy. If you got a thing and you need the guy, I'm the guy that does a thing. You know, my marketing gal doesn't like to say. I used to say, you know, dirty deeds done reasonably priced. Or depending on your frame reference, maybe it's vanilla ice. If you got a problem, yo, we'll solve it. We do a fair amount of work for the government. We do training

and support for the government. And then for companies in high net worth individuals that have problems we solve them that sounds ominous right it's not it's not always on this man you ought to ask me we'll probably run out of time now but you'll have to ask me the story about the we're not when i extorted the extortion guy but you know hey sometimes people have problems that they need solved that they just need problem solvers to solve and then you solve their problems it's like the 18 man we grew up right it's like if you can find them they'll solve your problem My marketing guy loves me, man. She's like, well, so what kind of marketing you want to do?

We're not going to market. What do you mean? Like, what do you think? I'm going to put a billboard up? Super Bowl ads? Right. No, I give me a logo and a name. That's it.

I need a website. A lot of dark. How about this blue color? No, I don't like blue. No, it's either black or white. Okay, fine. I'll let you put gray in there. That's it.

I don't need any other colors. If I look like any colors? Colorful guy? Come on. I knew a guy. So I knew a guy. Or I know a guy, but I knew him, that, if the

DEA is looking for a gun runner or not DEA, the DEA is drugs. Okay, if the ATF is looking for a gun runner, you know, a Brazilian gun runner and he's

they find out he's in Columbia, but he's good with the government, whatever. They can't go get him. They can't extradite him. They can't, he's protected. Then they would put out a, whatever saying, look, this guy shows up at a U.S. airport. We'll pay $250,000 for him. We won't ask any questions. And I knew a guy who said, so then four guys go to that area. They watch

them for a few days. They watch his routine. And then one day, they hit him with a taser, throw a black bag over his head, pull him into a van, drive to an airport, put him into a jet, fly him back to the United States, call the DEA and say, hey, we've got, you know, Jose, whatever, Gonzalez is here. And this is, you've been looking for him. And he said, and then the ATF shows up and they arrest, they take him away. And the whole time he's screaming and hollering, I've been kidnapped, I've been kidnapped. But by the time he's here, it's too late. I can't tell you how many guys I met that actually were in their own country.

Like they're in like, you know, Peru or Columbia. or something and they get grabbed that to this day they can't tell you how they know or how they got here they're like all i know is that i ended up in new york and the whole time i screamed and hollered i was kidnapped and they were like yeah okay well we don't know how that happens but we do know you're here now and you were indicted four years ago and we can't find you we couldn't find you until now yeah i don't do anything like that now okay now uh that is everything i do as a private citizen and our company, everything we do is legal. Right.

Right. Everything we do is legal. Now, we could probably have some conversations whether, you know, ethical, whether appropriate, whether appropriate amount of reputational risk. And we help clients navigate that. Hey, we want to do this. I appreciate it. You've watched a lot of movies. That's illegal.

We're not going to do that. We want to do this. Well, I'll tell you right now that is unethical. And if it came to the light of day, you probably wouldn't want to be associated with. that and then there's all the other things you know and we're very up front i mean people have all these crazy notions that we're going to go out and throw a bag over somebody's head or something like that we don't do any that kind of stuff you know we do other stuff but stuff like that happened i allegedly i don't know if you say so oh um yeah uh yeah it's so funny because the

first i was in prison i heard someone say that i was like come on and you know by the fourth or fifth person you hear say that you're like this is the thing like these guys are this is serious stuff happens man it's a weird world it's a weird world um okay yeah i feel good about this you feel good about it you feel you feel right you feel like anything else we got because i don't know what you do but okay i thought we were going to get in that but that's fine no listen i mean yeah i mean look people talk to me sometimes you can help sometimes you can't that's it i get calls like hey i hear you're a guy, I got a problem. I'm like, well, tell me about your problem. Maybe I'm a guy. No, and what we do, you know, we do a ton of services. I do want to say, you know, right

up front, right? Scams, frauds, impersonation investigations we handle. Privacy issues we handle. If you need to find somebody, we'll find them. If you need to appropriately influence people, we help with that as well. If people are inappropriately influencing you or your families, we help find that and remediate that as appropriate. Um, yeah. The only thing I really like, I talk a lot about technology. So, you know, I've helped out with technical surveillance and things like that. We talk about things like that. Kind of interesting.

I've got a show. You know, I'm trying to put together a show. What the Frog? Right? Last name's Finn Frock. I like the name. What the Frock? A little WTF.

What the frock? We're going to talk technology. And my piece, as you can imagine, for me, nothing's ever good or bad, right? Nothing's ever black or white. It's always gray for me. And so we're going to talk about high tech. like hey this newest greatest robot is that good or bad threat or opportunity but we're going to explain it artificial intelligence what is it and normal people i always say one of my superpowers

you know growing up on a farm and not being overly encumbered by education nor intelligence i can take really complicated topics and break them down so that every man understands them at least that's what i think i can i've achieved that feedback yeah that's what you do with the cryptocurrency that's it so we take really complicated topics we explain them so joe six pack can understand and then we talk about the pros and cons. Everything's got pros and cons. I was at Denny's last night. This is true story.

I was at Denny's last night. And I, you know, I had a little Brenner, you know, whatever. I order a little grand slam. And this robot delivers it. Bear connect. I'm like, what in the hell is that? I break out my phone. I take some pictures.

I take my plate off. It drives back around. I'm like, this is what happens when you want $20 for minimum wage. Okay, fine. I get it. But I'm looking at it. Like how cool. We're going to have to add that on the list of things we're going to talk about.

And all that came up. I was with a guy and we were talking about robots as guards. And he's like, that sounds ridiculous. Why would you have a robot guard? I said, well, clearly, you've never had a compound that needs guarded. No smoke breaks. No showing up for work drunk. No, not showing up.

Put a robot on the edge, get some sensors, get some cameras, forget about it. It's what you got. Well, latest and greatest thing, I'm going to buy one of these robot dogs. Have you seen the robot dogs with the flamethrower? Yeah. Yeah, I'm totally going to get one of those. Yeah. Why wouldn't you for crying out loud?

I don't know about the flamethrower part. I wouldn't want it with a, they don't come with a flame thrower. Oh yeah, you haven't seen that. $9,400 you can buy a robot dog that looks like the Boston Dynamics dog with a giant flamethrower on the back.

I thought you were just talking about the Boston Dynamics. No, no, no, it's from a Boston Dynamics. No, no, no, no. It's actually from a flamethrower company. They've bought these robot dogs and mounted flamethrowers on the back. It's like 30 feet of flame thrift. I mean, it is, it's incredible. And I'm like,

Man, if I'm doing well with my company, so here's the decisions I have to make these days, Matt. It's tough. I'm like, am I going to buy a motorcycle? Or am I going to buy a robot dog with a flamethrower? I'm like, I could expense a robot dog with a flamethrower. I talk about high tech. Yeah.

I would, we would interview the dog. We would maybe put it on the show. I don't know. A lot of people have motorcycles. I want to light my cigar. I don't know. Maybe it's home defense. I don't know.

Everyone wants a dog. I think I'd call it sparky. But yeah, robot dog with a flamethrower. If you haven't seen it. $9,400 could be yours. Somebody asked me the other day, they're like, what would the, what would the permitting process be on that? I'm like, bro, do you think anybody who's going to buy a robot dog

where the flamethrower is going to ask about what the permitting process is? I wouldn't. Hadn't crossed my mind. Right. Because I have a robot dog that shoots flames. You're going to come and check the permit on it? I wouldn't do that. Not in my neighborhood.

I was going to say, and you have to go with the dog. Because lots of people have robots. I mean, a lot of people have motorcycles. Everybody's got a motorcycle. That's not a big deal. No. How cool would that be? Robot dog with a flamethrer.

Knock on my door. I would hook it up with my ring camera. Maybe I don't know. No solicitation means no solicitation. So I... So did you hear... Speaking of technology, you hear about Elon Musk that are rolling out the Tesla's.

They're going to... You can buy a Tesla. You can sign it up for an app. And then you can go to work. you leave the robot taxi yeah and it takes off and so while i'm at work making a few hundred dollars right it's it's at it's at work making a few hundred dollars Elon's been promising that for years i have a Tesla I won't put that thing to work absolutely wow right isn't that cool amazing that's you know yeah that's that we'll see you know who you know who it despises the idea

every time we drive by like a a burn mark on the street yeah just goes Tesla Like a Tesla, she says, they set on fire. No, they don't. That's false. That's false. We detected and determined that there were several stage videos that showed Tesla's catching on fire, which were not true. Not true. Teslas are the safest cars on the road.

The weights in the bottom, they don't roll over. Come on, forget about it. Listen, she didn't want to hear this. The crumple zones there. Have you not? I mean, come on. No, no. And, you know, the worst part is someone dies in a Tesla and they're like, oh, man died in Tesla.

not man killed in car crash right so it's that yeah i i don't know i don't yeah i don't i don't get i don't but that's pretty cool though that's awesome love that look you either like did you hear about that you either like you either like technology you're excited about or you're not and for me look we want to go to mars yeah there we'll be high-fiving on mars yeah forget about it i can't wait take my robot dog with the flamethrower oh my god okay last question um Given your background Technology I'm not a tech guy

I grew up on a farm How far And for realistic Do you think Like robot Or AI policing Or You know

Oh as far as we want to make it Do you think it's like Any like downfalls of it Well I'll tell you You know one of the things I love about America And Americans And really just humans in general

As soon as we create something The second person To the party breaks it That's just what we do right we had a i generative a i we had was it called tay or something like that someone programmed this generative ai to be able to learn from people and like the day later it's spewing anti-semitic racist tropes that

because people are like oh wait it'll say it'll say what i what i get it to say it's kind of like when you have a like a little niece or nephew say poop say shit go tell mommy fuck uh because humans are just funny like that now so you know i was talking to a major city police department and i said hey I heard you guys you're going to get robot cops here you like these little robots that go around and you know whatever they're like yeah yeah we are but this is our city and those things will get the crap kicked out of them in like a half a second we that's why we have all of our security cameras are 18 feet because if they're any lower than that people confuse them with

bignatas and beat the crap out of them they're like that that dog will never hunt here man they will roll those robots like a champ um I think for me that there's a lot of things that that robots could do for policing. There's a lot of artificial intelligence we could use for policing. The problem is, once you have something like that that's objective, then you've got to live in the objective reality.

And you can't blame over policing and you can't blame profiling. You can't blame human bias, although you can try. But then things are just the way they are. Right. And so I think technology is not what's stopping us from having AI-enabled police and smarter policing.

people are what's stopping us. Civil rights advocates and people like that that inherently don't trust police. I'm not saying what I do or don't trust police, although I used to be a cop when I was in the Navy. But humans are going to slow us down more than the technology. Technology is going to be there very quickly. I mean, because you can tell, I mean, you can just...

It's inevitable. Yeah. It's not going to stop. I think that like anything, it's just like the self-driving cars, like they come out and, you know, there's a few issues. And over the next few years, they tweak those issues. and then it gets better and better. And before you know,

same thing with if you end up having, you know, Android police officers or, you know, whatever. Sure, there's going to be a, there's going to be a four or five, 10-year learning curve where they're going to tweak it to the point where it's, you know, game near perfect. And I'll tell you, too, so I was in a Middle Eastern country,

and this Middle Eastern country uses a lot of AI and robotized, if that's a word, robotized, robotized policing. And so where in the U.S. do we have most of the law enforcement encounters that go badly, right? Traffic stops. Well, in this particular country, you don't have traffic stuff. You're speeding down the road. You get a nice little text on your phone.

Good morning from the local police. You've been issued a speeding ticket for this amount. Have a great day. Right. And you've effectively done the same thing without the law enforcement interaction that is going to result in some kind of violence. Now, what you miss out on, of course, is that people that are breaking some laws are generally breaking a lot of laws, and until you stop them, they will continue to do it.

but I don't know. I think there's just a lot of things that we could do that would make things safer that don't require a lot of that human interaction. But I don't know. I'm also the guy that I just feel like if I'm driving 100 miles an hour down the highway hypothetically this morning,

I should have a fair shot to beat the cop. Right? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you know, I just say it's a, feel like that's American. No, no. But, you know. Yeah, anyway, okay.

Good question. All right. All right. You good? All right. Well, listen. We're good. We're good.

Listen, I appreciate you coming by. Yeah, of course, man. You know, like I told everybody, I saw you on stage and I thought, this guy's great. This guy's great. I mean, I thought like it's just a bunch of, like, random stories. Is that all right? No, that's good. Exactly what, uh.

Yeah. And we got, we got the bulk of, you know, how you entered into the CIA, a bunch of fun stories. Like, this is good. This is good. Hold on. Watch this. This is what you got to do. That's what I do it.

Okay. Hey, I really appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor. If you like the video, hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Please consider joining my Patreon. Share the video. Leave me a comment.

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